Praetorian: The Great Game Read online

  Pompeianus nodded slowly. ‘I, on the other hand, have a better vantage point for viewing the man’s reign. I see from a higher position.’

  He lowered his voice, despite the fact that they were alone. ‘Commodus is a charming young man with a great zest for life. I like him personally. I hold him in high esteem as a human being. There are few people alive I would prefer to stand beside at the chariot races or in the stands of the amphitheatre; or in a drinking pit, even.’

  Rufinus nodded sagely.

  ‘But’ Pompeianus said sharply, ‘though he wants to be the ruler, I fear he does not want to rule.’

  The guardsman frowned at the contradiction. ‘I’m not sure I understand?’

  ‘Commodus loves the pomp and the glory. Possibly he loves the power, which is a dangerous thing in any ruler. But he has little or no interest in any of the mechanics of Empire. The old emperor’s advisors were just that: advisors. They gave Aurelius their opinions of what could and should be done to keep the empire running smoothly, but Aurelius himself made the decisions, even when they were hard or unpleasant ones. The most important decision young Commodus has made since he settled into the palace was the details of the games that ran for months in honour of his noble father.’

  He swept an arm across the air between them as if to wipe away all that was said. ‘The so-called ‘advisors’ that crowd like vultures around young Commodus are almost entirely of a different breed. These freedmen who hunger for power are being given too much of it. The emperor is happy to leave the day-to-day running of the empire in the hands of inexperienced, greedy and dangerous men. Men such as Cleander, Mamertinus, Julianus and Perennis.’

  Rufinus shook his head. ‘But they have issued no commands that are cause for alarm, surely? I have heard nothing.’

  ‘Saoterus’ the general replied quietly.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘That man who seems young and lost among the gaggle of power-seeking ‘advisors’ appears to be the only one attempting to steer the emperor along a suitable path. Fortunate is the world that he is also the one to whom Commodus pays the most heed; his favourite, if you will. I have heard of potential orders for proscriptions of whole families, lines and tribes tabled by the vultures, vetoed on the suggestion of Saoterus. Had they made it to legal status, half the noble families in Rome would have been arrested and executed. A cursory examination of those families named would illuminate a few choice titbits, too: families with money that would seep into the treasury. Families with lands that abut the estates of men such as Cleander, where the boundaries could easily be redrawn. Saoterus alone seems to be standing between the emperor’s seal and the death of more than a dozen prominent families.’

  Rufinus blinked. He remembered Cleander and Saoterus well enough from Vindobona. Cleander he could see as a stirrer of political cauldrons. Saoterus had seemed so young and quiet.

  ‘It’s hard to believe.’

  Pompeianus nodded. ‘Nevertheless, it is true. You see why I ask and share all of this with you?’

  Rufinus shook his head and refilled his cup, making the mix stronger this time.

  ‘I told you why I was doing the bidding of Perennis, despite everything,’ sighed Pompeianus. ‘Survival. Lucilla is dangerous and cold, but she is relatively impotent at the moment. Commodus and his coven of snakes and vultures wield every drop of power in the empire. Tell me, when you know that lines are being drawn, on which side I should pitch my tent?’

  Rufinus stared. Could it be that already, so early into the golden-haired prince’s reign, the seedy corruption of the old Republic had already set in?

  ‘It all sounds so hopeless when you put it in those terms’ he said quietly.

  Pompeianus laughed again. ‘Far from it. It is a great game, young Rufinus. The closer you get to the purple, the more often you are required to play. You have entered into the tournament now and you need to learn the rules and how the pieces move, lest you find yourself out of it again swiftly, and the stakes are too high to accept that possibility.’

  ‘So we foil any attempt against the emperor not because it is the right thing to do, but because it is the most expedient thing?’

  Pompeianus nodded. ‘Survival. If we hope to help our new emperor achieve everything of which he is capable, we have to survive long enough to gain the necessary influence. You see how this works?’

  Rufinus nodded despondently. He did see how it worked, and it sickened him. He felt soiled simply by being told such things. How simple it had been to carry shield and pilum in the front of a century, to brace in the shieldwall against a thousand slavering barbarians. Suddenly he longed for the discomfort of the military marching camp; the cold numbness of the toes in the snow of Marcomannia; the endless ennui of guard duty and the unpleasantness of digging the shit-trench.

  Better to dig it than to live in it.

  ‘I don’t like this.’

  Pompeianus shrugged. ‘You don’t have to. Really, you shouldn’t if you are as good a man as you seem. But sadly, the longer you play the game, the more you enjoy it and the more you want to win.’

  ‘So what do we do?’

  The general poured himself another wine and sipped it straight and unwatered for the first time. ‘You need to ingratiate yourself. You need to make yourself important enough to my wife and her cackling whores of friends that you are allowed within the main complex. Only there are you likely to find anything of interest. Make use of slaves, especially this British girl of whom you speak. You now have as much hold over her as she does over you. She may know your secret, but the fact that she has not told anyone is enough to crucify her. You can use that to play her. She is your first piece in the game.’

  Rufinus’ eyes widened and he fought to control his tongue. To think of using Senova in such a way made him sick. He would not do so, but equally he was unwilling to reveal that weakness to the general. ‘Any other suggestions, sir?’

  Pompeianus shook his head. ‘Not yet. I would say that a man who managed to outwit and remove the impediment of a veteran bully in his unit should be able to engineer some way into the favour of his employer. Think on it.’

  Rufinus nodded solemnly and drained the last of his wine. He had thought the conversation would be enlightening for the villa’s master. He had not realised just how much he would learn in return; how much he wished he didn’t have to.

  ‘I had best go. I need to bathe and dry out and then spend some time in thought.’

  As he stood and stretched, replacing his cup on the table, Pompeianus smiled up at him. ‘I presume you can see yourself out? It would go best for you if you weren’t seen to be consorting with me, so try to leave quietly, though I think the rain will keep most observers away.’

  Rufinus smiled uncomfortably. ‘Thank you for your time and the wine, general. I will speak to you as soon as I have anything helpful to say.’

  With a respectful nod, Rufinus turned and strode from the room, passing through the doorways and chambers and out into the beautiful garden where the pounding rain was still battering leaves with a deafening clatter, splashing up from puddles.

  As he passed through the gate to the garden, the way he had first entered, he had that prickly, nervous sensation of being watched, and turned, peering between the trees up the slope. For a moment he thought he’d caught the edge of a flicker of movement from the corner of his eye but, as he watched intently, nothing but the endless torrential rain filled his view.

  The rain battered on throughout the evening as the remaining light, such as it was beneath the roiling grey clouds, failed and petered out. Rufinus returned to the baths to find them empty and quiet. Disrobing, he once more laid out his clothes on the floor of the warm room to dry them and clattered around the decorative floors in the wooden sandals provided until he sank gratefully into one of the semi-circular hot baths.

  Allowing himself to relax for the first time that evening, he pondered on the wealth of information he had now uncovered and considered the path
ahead. As a new arrival, even having served for more than a week without incident, there was no hope of him winkling his way into a position of trust within the main wing of the villa. Pompeianus was making hopeless suggestions. It would be months before they would place enough faith in him to allow him access to the more sensitive areas, and by then the deed he’d been sent here to prevent could have been done.

  There had to be a way of speeding things up.

  Lazily, he ducked his head beneath the warm water, holding his breath and listening to the distant sounds of the furnaces being fed, muted through the water. In that watery netherworld of peace, he thought it through further. It was a matter of comparative trustworthiness. He was new, and therefore even people who had only served for a month were more trusted than he. Those with half a year at the villa were likely to be trusted in the inner circles. In time there would be new recruits and he would move up the ladder, so the only way to speed up the process was to climb that ladder faster. And doing that meant either removing those above him or adding more below.

  Murder was clearly not the way. Likely there would be some men who could have been assigned to this task who would look upon such clandestine wickedness as part of the duty and take it stoically. But the affair with Scopius in the aqueduct tank had taught Rufinus that he simply did not have the coldness required for murder. He would face any man in a fair fight for a real reason, but knives in the dark were not his way.

  No. He needed a scapegoat to climb on the back of. But again, manufacturing something to damage another man was a dishonourable and wicked thing and Rufinus would feel uncomfortable dropping an innocent man in the shit, even with the best of motives. So quite simply he needed someone who deserved that ill befall them. His mind instantly fell on Dis, the hollow, dead-eyed killer with his evil dogs, and on Tad, the massive cannibal. But again, that was a direction not worth thinking on. Surely they both deserved it, but they were too high profile; too high a target to reach.

  He would have to wait until an opportunity presented itself. Some prying and carefully loaded questions might supply him with a suitable candidate. Then, revealing their crimes and thus pushing himself up in trust and esteem and closer to that all-important access. With a smile, and realising that his breath was almost spent, Rufinus burst through the surface of the water, heaving in breaths. The water splashed over the edge of the bath and onto the steps below where it quickly began to dry on the warm floor.

  Vigorously he rubbed his face, balling his fists and knuckling his eyes before reaching up and squeezing the water from his short hair. He opened his eyes, still blurred from the water, in time to see a shadow vanish from the doorway into the main vestibule.

  He blinked away the last of the droplets and rubbed his face again, peering at the dimly-lit doorway, strange dancing shapes cast on the walls with their paintings of marine life by the oil lamps strategically placed around the room.

  Nothing there now. But there had been someone there, while he had rested below the water’s calm surface, someone had been in the room with him. His eyes strayed to the floor and he scanned the decorative surface, looking for tracks. No sign. Whoever it was had taken care to remove wet garments before they entered, or had been in the heated portion of the baths for long enough to dry out and leave no watery trace.

  As quietly as he could, yet as quickly as he dared, Rufinus slipped from the water and dropped lightly to the steps, his bare feet quickly warming on the heated floor. Moving on the balls of his feet, as quietly as if he were hunting deer in the woods back home with Lucius, the guardsman dropped the two steps to the flat surface and padded almost silently across the room to the doorway, pausing by the jamb and leaning round sharply to catch anyone on the other side.

  Nothing. No shapes, no people, no shadows, no tracks and no noise bar the distant thump of logs being fed into the furnace and the steady drone of the rain clattering on the tiles of the bathhouse roof.

  So, not just someone sneaking around, but someone very stealthy. Waiting just long enough to be sure he was definitely alone, Rufinus padded back across to his towel and wooden sandals, his feet already uncomfortably hot. Gratefully, he slid into the footwear and wrapped the towel around his waist. His bathing experience had become less than relaxed.

  A quick check revealed that his clothing was almost dry - enough to wear without discomfort. Quickly, he shrugged into the clothes and hurried back, clattering across the floor, to the changing room, where he was immensely relieved to see his boots and sword still standing in their alcove. He’d taken to leaving his mail shirt in his room. Clearly he’d been taking a chance with his personal protection, but there simply weren’t enough hours in the day to maintain and clean and polish old mail when the rain was constant, day and night.

  Of course, given recent developments, he might have to change that policy and discount comfort for safety.

  Belting on his sword, he moved to the door of the bathhouse, looking out miserably, with a hint of nervous tension, into the constant, sheeting semi-dark rain. The arched corridor that promised dry passage towards the barracks was just over fifteen paces from the baths, lit by lamps and looking inviting in the dusk gloom. An unpleasant run, but not far enough to leave him drenched again.

  Taking a deep breath, and sure that there were no lurking, shadowy figures among the trees or building corners out there, he charged from the doorway, holding his red military scarf over his head with his left hand to shelter from the worst of the torrent.

  With a bang and a tangle of arms and legs, he suddenly found himself lying on the wet paving slabs outside the baths. A moment of panic thrilled through him. Someone had tripped him at the doorway, someone lurking to one side. He’d checked the landscape ahead, but had made the stupid error of not looking around the corner before he ran.

  His hand went to the hilt of his sword as he struggled to disentangle himself. His mind focused on an inescapable fact and forced his hand to release the sword. Whoever he had collided with was also lying on the floor, entangled with him and was therefore unlikely to be an assassin out for his life.

  He blinked and focused. Smooth, olive-skinned legs struggled to free themselves of his own hairy appendages. Flushing slightly, Rufinus’ gaze followed them up to the hem of a short grey tunic that had ridden up over the girl’s thighs. He jerked his gaze up to focus on her face. It was a girl he’d not seen before. Pretty, possibly Aegyptian or Arabian in origin, she had lustrous black hair and almond eyes. Not a patch on Senova, of course, but clearly a beauty.

  And suddenly she was upright, springing to her feet.

  ‘Oh Jove, no!’

  She was staring down at the pile of elegant clothes she had been carrying, covered with a waterproof sheet, now mussed up and sodden, lying in heaps on the floor, some wrapped around Rufinus’ dirty boots.

  ‘Oh bollocks. Sorry.’

  ‘What were you doing, running out of doorways without looking where you were going?’ the girl snapped, gathering up the sopping clothes.

  Rufinus bridled. ‘I was looking where I was going. I just wasn’t looking where you were going!’

  Bending, he began to help gather the clothing, but the slave girl snatched them out of his hands and bundled them up in a pile, glaring at him as she did so. ‘Because of your clumsiness, I shall have to do all these again and the mistress will be angry.’

  Rufinus rolled his eyes. ‘Look, I said I was sorry. It was an accident that we could both have avoided with a little care, now stop being so melodramatic and let me help you carry these.’

  He held up a female garment that was clearly not supposed to be worn on the outside and she snatched it from his hand. ‘Get back to your job, soldier, and leave me alone.’

  Turning her back, she stormed off, the effect of her anger slightly spoiled as she dropped half the pile again after five steps and had to pause to gather them all.

  Rufinus watched her disappear and sighed. Typical. He was clumsy, or at least prone to trips and acciden
ts, but this was not his fault, despite her vehemence. And now he was as drenched as he had been when he first went to the baths. Briefly he contemplated going back to the bathhouse and drying off again, but concluded that this was clearly a bad day and should be written off as such with no further attempt to brighten it.

  Squelching unpleasantly through the rain, he made for the barracks.

  ‘What a bad-tempered, arrogant, ignorant witch’ he muttered to himself as he ducked out of the rain and into the corridor. His sojourn in the baths had seen the last of the day’s light fade and it was with some relief that he left the gloomy evening and entered the lamp-lit world of the palace.

  A few turns and doors and he found himself in the courtyard of the barracks, looking up at the wooden stairs and balconies that served the individual sleeping rooms. The chamber that he shared with the other new arrival, Fastus, and the least accommodating room-mate of the guard, flickered with a low light and, as Rufinus looked up at the open doorway, a reverberating, deafening, and surprisingly lengthy fart rang out. Clearly Glaucus was in the room, then. The man had some sort of digestive trouble that made sharing a room with him one of the most eye-watering experiences of Rufinus’ life. The room smelled permanently like the inside of an Arabian mercenary’s boot after a long march. Not quarter of an hour passed in the night without some sort of disturbing gurgling noise, a breath-stealing fart or some other unidentifiable sound.

  It was unpleasant and, had Glaucus not been one of the friendliest men Rufinus had met in years, he would probably have killed the man by now. Fortunately, tonight the young guardsman was weary enough that he’d be able to sleep through anything.

  Padding up the stairs, he slipped in through the doorway and entered the dimly-lit room. Like all chambers in the barracks, the one the three men shared was set up for four occupants with two double bunks. Glaucus had graciously agreed to occupy one of the top bunks on the general scientific belief that his warm, odorous emissions would rise and occupy the rafters and that his companions would be saved the worst of it, sleeping below the rising cloud. The theory may be sound, but the result was hardly noticeable. Fastus, apparently a light sleeper all his life, claimed the other lower bunk with the unoccupied upper, leaving Rufinus sleeping below the gurgling, trumpeting Glaucus.