The Oath Keeper by Alaric Longward

Author:Alaric Longward [Longward, Alaric]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hardhill Productions
Published: 2018-11-03T16:00:00+00:00

BOOK 3: SEJANUS

CHAPTER 13 (NORTHERN MOESIA, A.D. 23, June 15th)

In that land where Rome and Dacia met, the filth of Rome seemed like a dream.

A distant dream, or perhaps a nightmare.

And that land, so far removed from the hills of Rome, seemed to welcome me.

I had spent months healing, and many more seeking answers, setting up new hide-outs in Rome, and helping Gernot. I had smelled the filth of Rome, and also the sudden fear that seemed to run like a molten river through the city, as Sejanus began his slow assimilation into the vacuum that had been Pompeia’s mysterious world. Somewhere, hidden from all eyes, he learnt the secrets crimes of Rome, and Tiberius, grateful Tiberius, concentrated on brooding, and on his son Drusus the Younger and Tiberius Gemellus, and tried his best to ignore the insistent demands from the people that he adopt Agrippina’s boys.

It had taken time to set up many plans, and counterplans.

It had not taken a long time to figure out that Tiberius, while strange and dangerous, was not careless while guarding his family.

Pompeia’s plot had scared him.

Twenty men guarded his people. His family. At all times.

And while Sejanus was likely subtly hinting to him that Agrippina was the one who had tried to kill him, somehow Tiberius was not willing to move on her.

And I thought it was all Livia’s doing.

The snake was moderating Sejanus’s greed, and Tiberius’s fears.

I had little hope of killing Drusus the Younger in Rome.

It had been a depressing realization.

Also, Red and Agamemnon had not been able to find Pompeia.

We had sat around our house in the filthy part of Rome and pondered our failures. We had seen Drusus the Younger find honors and glory in Rome, and Sejanus basking in the light of Sunna, growing powerful, and we had been able to do nothing.

And then, Decubalus of Dacia had gone to war with Rome, and Drusus was to push him back, and I knew gods were finally on my side. Perhaps only one.

And I had used one of the people that now hated Rome almost as much as I did, and they had agreed to help me, and themselves.

Drusus left Rome with a thousand praetorians and a hundred Germani Guards and would meet two legions in Moesia, and then go and push Dacia back over River Danubius.

So, with plans for Rome made, I had traveled north alone.

I had hired men, scouted, and waited, living in small villages, or brazenly in Roman army camp suburbs, until Drusus had marched north.

And I knew what the plans were. I did, for I had an ally.

The wind that was ruffling the treetops across River Danubius made me smile.

The eternal woods of the north, the rolling hills and sharp mountain ranges gave me some of my strength back. I had been lacking it, in Rome.

I had missed the open ranges of Pannonia, the fields of wheat around Danubius, and the mysterious north, the Black Woods, and even darker forests, the thousand rivers and all the promise of freedom of the north.

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