Rome 4: The Art of War by M C Scott

Author:M C Scott [Scott, M C]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Historical Fiction
Amazon: B009A94MN8
Publisher: Transworld Digital
Published: 2013-03-28T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Rome, October, AD 69

Jocasta

‘WE WON!’

Domitian, who had never seen war, punched the air, dancing. Around him on the couches or standing by the pool in my atrium were Sabinus, Caenis, Pantera and me. We had all lived through too many wars to contemplate another with anything but horror.

‘What?’

Domitian rounded on us, his eyes alive with scorn. He had become more animated, more mobile, more expressive these past months. It’s possible, I agree, that I might have had something to do with that. I was kind to him. I didn’t reject him. I also did not sleep with him, ever.

Now, when his gaze fell on me, his scorn became uncertainty. ‘Would you rather we had lost?’

I said nothing. Caenis was the one who answered, and she did it gently.

‘We would prefer there to have been no battle at all,’ she said. ‘For every victorious man there is another dead, with his wife a widow, his children fatherless, his life gone, and all to satisfy the pride of legionaries who would rather fight than yield to the inevitable.’

‘But it wasn’t inevitable.’

‘No, it wasn’t.’ Pantera pushed himself to his feet. He was shaggily blond now, not the shimmering, almost-silver gold of Felix, the boss-eyed assassin who padded after him, but more like aspen leaves at early autumn; it gave him a more youthful look.

Cleverly woven leather made a neckpiece and silver rings set with small, glittering gems adorned nine of his ten fingers so that, did you look at him unclosely, you’d have said he was someone’s ageing catamite, not older than twenty-five; fading, but not yet having lost all his beauty.

Of course, this wasn’t true, but even I had to stare at him hard to remember who he really was, so you can understand why Lucius hadn’t taken him yet.

He had been sitting on the floor by my feet until then, close enough for his shoulder to press against my knee. We were becoming easier in each other’s company; not yet friends, but allies, at least.

Standing now, he said, ‘Nothing in war is inevitable. If Caecina’s legions had reached Cremona sooner, they would have swung the balance. We were lucky, and a good war doesn’t depend on luck. So …’ He stepped half a pace to his left and was no longer in shadow. ‘We must make sure we don’t rely on luck next time.’

The change in Pantera had not all come from Gudrun’s dye pots; the strains of all that Lucius planned to do to him weighed on his cheekbones, hollowing the flesh beneath them. He was leaner, fitter, sharper. The set of his mouth did not allow for compromise, if it ever had.

‘To that end, perhaps it would be useful if we surveyed the terrain and the positions of the legions and looked at what may be coming between now and the year’s end. Caenis? Can it be done now?’

It could, evidently, whatever ‘it’ was.

With a small and secret smile, Caenis nodded to Matthias who rang a silver bell,

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