Field of Mars (The Complete Novel)

Marcus Licinius Crassus’s lust for gold and glory was legendary. What became of his army is myth.

In Crassus the tyrant, Rufinius the soldier, Appias the historian, Mena the hag and Lucia the Golden Whore, David Rollins brings to life a mystery that has plagued historians for centuries. The only constant in this world is Mars, the god of war, and who he will favour is anyone’s guess.

Desperate to write himself into the pages of history, proconsul Marcus Licinius Crassus marched 40,000 Roman legionaries into the heart of the Parthian empire. More than 10,000 were never seen or heard from again.

In a story that spans empires and generations, this vanished army’s fate is finally unveiled. From the streets of Rome to the deserts of ancient Iran, around the globe into the heart of an empire vaster than anything Rome ever imagined, a young Alexandrian soldier is borne on the tides of the age of empires from soldier of Rome to slave of Babylon to commander of armies.

Perfect for fans of Robert Harris and Conn Iggulden, this sweeping historical thriller takes the reader on an epic journey across ancient empires and into the unknown stories of myth and legend.

Li-ch’ien, province of Gansu, Chin

a.d. IV Non. Sept. 750 AUC

2 September, 4 BC

Where did it start? Was there a moment when my future became the inevitable present? Can I follow the events that have led me to it? Can I trace them back to a single point?

The answer is yes. And strangely, I feel that it happened just a month ago, even though the memory also carries with it the dust of a lifetime. But in truth all my memories are like that now, jumbled like loose unnumbered sheets scattered by the wind, only to be regathered in no particular order. Events that happened years ago feel like they transpired only last week. And yet I have trouble remembering what I had to eat this morning. I have to concentrate. If I don’t, I find myself drifting from one memory to the next, forward and backward as if I have become Time’s plaything, or it mine.

I have a girl who attends me; a slave. She’s from a kingdom north and east of Xiongnu. She is quite striking and no more than twenty years of age, though she doesn’t know for sure. I used to think she was too skinny, but now I like it. There are too many dainty sows living here fattened up on fried lard soaked in sugar and milk. Look out the window and you’ll see them picking their way down the cobbles on their tiptoes, stepping between the dung pads.

Where was I? Yes … I was going to mention her eyes. They are almond-shaped, like everyone’s around here, but it’s their color. They are
green
.

I call her Viridia, based on the word
viridis
, which in Latin of course means green. One look at those eyes and the reason is obvious – she is a daughter of China and Rome. I wonder who her grandfather was. Did I know him? Viridia is my sole remaining slave. I sold most of the rest and made the remainder free.

Believe me when I tell you that I had no thought of purchasing Viridia at all, pretty though she was, until I saw those jade eyes. What confirmed her purchase to me was that this young woman could read and write Hanyu, the language of the Han. Now that’s truly unusual – not the Hanyu part, but that she could read and write. My own hands are perpetually twisted now, as if they hold an invisible javelin. I can write for a short while in Latin, but Viridia’s dexterity with paint and brush are amazing. If I had time I would teach her the language of the Subura.

Aside from helping me write my story, Viridia cooks my food, cleans my house, warms my bed when it’s cold and, yes, provides me with other duties you can probably guess at. Thank the gods I’m still capable at my age, though with this pain in my stomach that Apothecary Wu tells me is eating me alive from within, who knows for how much longer. There I go again – wandering from the point!

So … where did this adventure begin that has been my life?

“Viridia … Viridia! Are you ready …? There you are. Go get your brush and your silks. No, no, don’t fuss with more cushions – I’m perfectly comfortable. What? For whom is this letter? It’s to posterity, of course. Come, the day is wasting and I don’t have forever. Sit and let’s begin.”

*

The commotion grows louder when the music starts up – several pipers and a young man on a drum. Though I can’t see it, I hear the beast’s hooves cracking against the cobbles like flints, the noise filtering through the narrow laneway behind the square.

“They’re here!” shouts Quinta, straining to look over the heads around us. And then she turns to me and says, “I’m going to leave before I’m told to go.”

“Yes, you’re right,” I agree. “You shouldn’t be here. It’s not proper.”

“Of course I’m right. Have I ever been wrong?”

There is only one right answer to such a question from one’s wife. I give it to her and my reward is a hand burrowing inside the folds of my toga to gently cup my testicles, the gentle swell of her hip and buttock obscuring this show of affection from chance observation.

“I’ll have food on the table when you get home,” she says before sucking my lips with hers, the sparkle of lust glittering in her soft brown Gallic eyes. A tingle rushes up my spine and I harden like a teenager. But Quinta is gone in an instant, swallowed by the crowd of onlookers gathered to watch the sacrifice and perhaps gain a little of its benefits, if such are to be forthcoming.

I sigh and try to get my mind back on the task, producing a wax tablet and stylus from a fold in my toga as three dark-skinned men, their black hair and beards plaited and waxed, wash their hands and then fire some incense in a small brazier in preparation for the sacrifice. They are Parthians. The Roman crowd is putting on a show of rare politeness, giving the foreigners room. No one is swearing at them or spitting on them. That in itself is remarkable.

As the procession arrives more Parthians come into view – priests, I would say, two of them, their heads respectfully covered by lushly embroidered squares of wool, as is proper when communing with the gods. Accompanying them are half a dozen acolytes carrying baskets of honey cakes and dried figs, jugs of honey and oil. Next in the procession is the popa, the man who carries the mallet. This one is a fat middle-aged Roman wearing an obvious wig with wet blonde ringlets. Behind him are two victimari, the men charged with dragging the reluctant snow-white victima into the open. The young bull’s horns are gilded with gold foil. Red and white ribbons adorn its neck, and there’s an embroidered woolen blanket on its back not unlike the cloth squares covering the Parthian priest’s heads, though, of course, much larger.

I look over the animal. Froth flecks its maw, its eyes are wild and frightened, its nostrils flaring as it snorts. Terror – not a good sign. Is the animal prescient, I wonder, aware of its imminent future? More likely, the foreigners are penny pinchers and simply haven’t paid the victimari enough to stupefy the animal with drugged fodder, as is proper.

The acolytes place the libations of honey, oil, dried figs and wine around the animal while the priest delivers the praefatio in abysmal Latin, informing us all that the sacrifice will be a request to Mithra, the Sun God and slayer of the Primeval Bull, the Protector of Cattle, Guardian of the Waters, Bestower of Green Pastures et cetera and so forth, to grant Parthia a full and fruitful relationship with Rome, and inviting the god to attend the sacrifice. This goes on and on. Finally the head priest consummates proceedings, burning some hairs plucked from the animal’s brow on the altar and, in more atrocious Latin, he proclaims the consecration of the victim.

His acolytes feed the young bull’s tethers through a ring at the base of the altar and yank on them, forcing the reluctant animal to lower its head – thus addressing the necessary act of acquiescence. The bull snorts and rolls its eyes and bites its tongue, its fright increasing, blood now in its saliva. The priests dip branches of laurel leaves into bowls of wine and then flick them at the animal, spotting its white hide with droplets of red. In the corner of the square, a fool masturbates as he talks loud gibberish and shakes his spare fist at the heavens. There’s one in every crowd.

The air shifts direction and the smell of sweating bodies and animal dung mingles with the wafting fragrance of baking bread from some unseen shop. And all of these scents steam and intermingle with the early morning summer heat.

Ah, Rome. Who wouldn’t but take a deep breath?

Scratching away at the tablet, I record all these observations.

A signal is given, a nod from a priestly head. The acolytes remove the ribbons and then the woolen blanket from bull’s back. The celebrant gently runs the sacrificial knife – more sword than dagger and with an edge that could peel an overripe tomato – down the bull’s spine. With this action, the animal is now officially divine property.

“Do I strike?” The popa intones the time-honored question loudly so that everyone may hear, the fat rolls around his neck quivering. An expectant hush falls over the crowd.

Amid the breathless expectation, some fool calls out, “What are you waiting for, mentula?” Someone doesn’t appreciate the popa being called a penis and a brief scuffle breaks out.

There’s a nod from the celebrant and the popa raises the mallet high in the classic two-handed grip. The beast’s flanks quiver to discourage the flies, but it’s otherwise still, perhaps too terrified to move. The mallet falls, striking its mark on the beast’s head solidly with a thud and the tension seems to leave the animal as it sinks to its knees, front legs buckling. The animal is subdued, now at peace. The blade reappears in the hand of the cultrarius, the knifeman. He raises the bull’s head and there’s a motion under its throat, a flash of polished steel. And then a fountain of blood gushes forth, a veritable geyser, warm and inviting.

The crowd is sprayed with this blessing and a ribbon of it arcs across my toga and splashes on my face, a salty sweet coppery tang on my lips. I smear it across my cheeks, aware of my own smile, rejoicing in the good fortune of having been randomly soused. The animal eases silently onto its side, embracing death, while around me the crowd surges forward to receive its own benediction of holy blood.

As the flow of the victim’s life force subsides, the pavement underfoot now as slippery as river stones with all the blood, the cultrarius goes to work once more, eviscerating the animal with a slice from anus to breastbone. The exta bursts from the deep cut and the celebrant and haruspex – a gnarled and twisted old man renowned for his divination – move in. Several onlookers, impatient to hear the augury, shuffle forward.

But there’s sudden concern on their faces, and then horror as they begin to rear back. The bent old man rises and holds the animal’s liver aloft, a brown ooze sliding down his thin, veined forearms. Even from a dozen paces away I can plainly see the cysts puckering the organ. It’s diseased, like the liver from an old sick bull, not a young virile animal. The crowd is far from happy. What does this portend? I’m starting to think that the blood spoiling my perfectly good white toga is tainted. And I’m not the only one. A couple of toughs in the crowd, scarred hard men, take angry steps toward the Parthians.

Before they get too close, however, the celebrant intervenes. “This sacrifice is null and void!” he calls out. “NULL AND VOID!”

The thugs brush him aside and launch themselves at the Parthians, blaming them, presumably, for choosing an inauspicious animal. Things deteriorate quickly as more fists are thrown and a general riot breaks out. I join the rush to get away from the spreading brawl and find an exit beneath the arch of an old disused aqueduct. But then, while running down a narrow alleyway beyond it, I’m suddenly and unexpectedly jerked into a doorway, lifted clean off my feet.

“Appias Cominius Maro?”

“Hey! HEY!” The words are squeezed out of my throat as I struggle like a pup held by the scruff of its neck. This kind of treatment is alien to me, for I am far from being a small man. I am set down in the lee of the doorway, the fleeing crowd outside still surging past like a swollen river that has broken its banks.

The man who just snatched me off the street is a giant, made bigger in every way like the sculpture of a god. Thunderbolts with wings are tattooed onto his immense forearms. This tells me instantly that he’s a praetorian legionary. And there’s another man with this brute. He’s smaller but still big by any other standards. A chunk of flesh is missing from his cheek, a wound long since healed, the dark burnished scar devoid of the black bristle covering the rest of his face and head. On this man’s forearms are the same winged lightning bolt tattoos.

“Calm down, worm,” this smaller man growls. “You are Appias Cominius Maro, the historian? Tell me.”

I’m unsure about whether I should own up to being me.

“Answer me!” he snaps.

“No!” I reply.

“I don’t believe you.”

I try again to free myself from the giant’s grip on the back of my neck.

“I said calm down!” he shouts. “Nothing’s going to happen to you, unless you struggle and make violence necessary. Our dominus wants to see you.”

The giant, his accomplice, changes his grip, grabbing my bicep with crushing power.

“So I’m a worm but it takes two of you to catch me?” I say.

The smaller man shrugs. “Someone had to come along and do the talking.”

Explaining this further, the giant cutting off the circulation in my arm opens his mouth. Residing inside that red cavern where his tongue once lived is a short pink stub of scar tissue.

I attempt to struggle loose again.

“If you run,” the talker says, “we’ll have to catch you and that won’t be pretty for you.”

‘Who’s your dominus?’ I ask.

“Not for us to say.”

“What’s the secret?”

“No more questions.”

“Praetorian legionaries … You’re Gaius Julius Caesar’s men.”

“You talk too much, but I’ll allow that we’re veterans, former centurions both, and we fought with Caesar in Gallia, so watch what you say.”

I ignore the boast. “I don’t get taken many places against my will.”

“You’re coming with us freely.”

“This is freely?”

“Think of us as your protection.”

Out in the alleyway Roman citizens are still running away, though the numbers are dwindling.

“This is where I live – I don’t need your protection.”

A sneer spreads across the talker’s face. “You actually live in this neighborhood of dog fuckers and whores?” The hand around my arm is released and falls on my shoulder with the weight of an iron plate from the gymnasium.

The talker leads off. There’s a push from the giant to get my legs working. “Roll the dice right,” the talker says over his shoulder, “and you’ll find yourself walking toward fame and riches.”

So, someone with praetorian legionaries on the payroll – veteran centurions no less – wants to see me, a historian. I’ll admit I’m intrigued.

We are on the outskirts of the Subura, not far from the insula where I live. I glance in its direction and toy with the notion of making a run for it. Quinta will be wondering where I am. She’ll have fish bought from our current favorite street vendor, an old Italian from Etruria. The fish will be fried and delicious, ready and waiting right about now.