Field of Mars (The Complete Novel) (31 page)

“Before it is too late, restore the agreement struck between the two parties, General, and your own stature will soar.” Rufinius turned and watched the men advancing on the commerce. The slaughter was imminent and would end in all their deaths.

“I ask you again, Tribune. Is one woman worth all this?”

“And I say again – it is not the woman but the principle.”

“You have cornered me, which I resent,” Saikan growled.

Screams rose from the wagons, shouts from the legionaries. The general breathed heavily, knowing he, like the Han, had been defeated.

“Tribune – the golden whore is yours to take for a wife. Consider her a spoil of this battle. But know that while the men’s trust might, as you say, soar, mine has been crucified.”

Rufinius held out his arm for the general to shake and thus seal their bond. “Now, perhaps, there is a solid foundation upon which to build association.”

But rather than take the tribune’s arm, Saikan snapped at his men to lower their weapons and the Xiongnu rode back to the encampment in a dust cloud of their own making.

“Cornicen Magnus,” Rufinius said quietly watching the Xiongnu ride away. “Sound the recall.”

Mena said the correct words over the burned meats, grains, honey, and wine on the altar, waking the gods with pleasant smells. Next she scattered dried fox bones and teeth onto the silk cloth with a drop of her blood, her own system of augury, and examined the arrangement with a keen eye. The manner in which the remains came to rest spoke to her, the infinite patterns causing visions to materialize in the place where waking dreams are born.

Were the visions she saw authentic portrayals of an inevitable tomorrow? Signposts of what might possibly be? Or were they the rantings of a woman who was just old, with a mind that wandered? Mena knew in her heart that what she saw could be any of these things, or perhaps something else entirely. But see them she did.

“It was not your time or the tribune’s time,” she informed General Saikan. “The gates of heaven are closed to you, not because Tengri and the Eternal Blue Sky has no time for your plans, but because your path goes on to the ends of the world, in step with the legionaries.” Mena stopped talking.

“Nothing else?” Saikan asked.

“There is one thing – your King, Chanyu Zhizhi. He is most displeased with you.”

“What? Why?”

“Nothing more is revealed.” 
Mena now saw only teeth and bones. 

“Surely your bones lie. Not only am I a faithful servant, I have brought him substantial wealth.”

“I cannot say. There is no more to see. Come back when you have moved beyond the crossroads. The spirits are blind to the path you will choose, or perhaps it is just me who is blind. Once you are upon it, I am sure your tomorrow will become clear.”

Saikan wrung his hands. “When will I know when I have moved onto this path you speak of, past these
crossroads
?”

“Who can say,” Mena replied, her impatience growing, along with Saikan’s frustration.

Saikan wondered why he had ever decided to embark on the quest to know his future. Seeing glimpses of it had only served to put him on edge and cause him to judge all of his actions, even the smallest, aware that he could possibly change his destiny and set himself on an unknown course. “Can you not tell me what I should do?”

“No,” said Mena. “The choices, mistakes and perfections, are yours to make. I do not instruct. I merely see. I would say, though, that it would be wise to end your anger with Alexandricus. There should be partnership between you – even friendship.”

“He is a slave.”

“Whose fate is tied to your own.”

“Yes, yes …” Saikan wrung his hands some more, got up, and paced around the tent. “What can you tell me of the golden whore?”

“Oh! You do not know? She has died. There was a growth. She was found dead in her wagon.”

“What?”

“It is sad.”

“She is dead?”

“As I have said.”

“Where are her remains?”

“Buried in the desert, since dug up by animals, and dispersed by the birds. Her soul will wander the earth for all eternity. It’s a tragedy.”

“Why am I hearing of this only now?”

Mena shrugged. “I am no camp cornicen.”

“What is the mind of Rufinius Alexandricus? You know they were to marry.”

“The whole legion knows it.”

Mena’s young slave assistant came into the tent to clean and tidy it. She bowed respectfully to the general, who took more than a passing interest in her. She was tall, her black hair worn short, though not quite boy-like. And her blue eyes were ringed with kohl so that they shone like bright gemstones. Being looked upon by eyes the color of the Eternal Blue Sky was something Saikan found most unsettling, and he turned from her.

“This is Lucia. She is to be Alexandricus’s bride in the golden whore’s place.”

Saikan looked at Lucia anew, his face a mask. “Chanyu Zhizhi will be disappointed by her death.”

“But he was not to have her. Surely you will find death easier to explain than that she has been taken by another?” Mena replied.

General Saikan returned his gaze to the hag as she again cast the bones. Rufinius had told him much the same thing.

“Do not fret, General. Your Chanyu will get over it. If he doesn’t, he is, as they say in Latin, ‘stultior quam asinus’ – stupider than an ass – for there is much treasure in the Han caravan, I hear – miles of silks, the stone called jade, pearls, carnelian, gold … And many women too, some of whom are bewilderingly beautiful. I have seen them. So many more enchanting slaves to divert the attention of your Chanyu. And let’s not forget you bring him an army, the like of which he has never seen, an army that has more than paid for itself already with the capture of this handsome caravan. If there is a rank above general I am sure you will have it.”

“Enough! You are prattling.” Saikan watched Mena’s slave come into the tent again and collect soiled food bowls to be rinsed. “Andica,” he said.

The young woman continued at her task as if he had not spoken.

“What did you say?” Mena asked. “No, no, Andica is dead. As I told you, this is
Lucia
. With Andica gone to the underworld, Lucia will marry Rufinius Alexandricus in the golden whore’s place.”

“Lucia …” Saikan watched the slave woman as she moved around the tent, tidying.

“Yes, poor thing,” Mena continued. “She wears the iron ring of engagement given to her by the Tribune. As you know I have read his bones. He is on a most unfortunate path.”

“I will be truthful with you, old woman. I cannot make up my mind if you are more or less than you seem,” Saikan told her.

“Speak not in riddles, General.”

“Ha! That is the only language you know.”

“What has been done has been rendered for your benefit also.”

Saikan shook his head. “It is true what they say – you Romans are deceitful and cunning. Is that plain enough? What about Nonus,” he said, his voice tinged with anger as he stood. “Confess! What witchcraft did you weave that caused him to walk into a leopard’s den, for I am sure as the gods that occupy the sky that you were at the heart of it.”

“Me? Why me? I cannot help you. The actions of that troubled man puzzle me still.”

“Mena, you are as much architect as witch and we both know it.”

“More riddles,” she replied. “Now, if you haven’t noticed, I am old. I must have rest.”

“When is the marriage ceremony?” Saikan asked, defeated.

“It is to be tomorrow.”

The general marched from the tent with obvious disquiet.

*

Appias, Carbo, Libo, and Dentianus bore witness to the ceremony as men of the groom, while the junior tribunes and Petronius looked on.

“That’s Andica?” Libo whispered to Appias.

“Shhh … The name is Lucia,” he replied.

“The old hag has done a good job with her. I don’t recognize her.”

“You can’t disguise the eyes, though, can you?” observed Appias.

“When she was the golden whore,” said Carbo, “she was painted up and primped like a patrician’s love toy. Honestly, I have no idea what the real Andica – I mean
Lucia
– looks like.”

Dentianus cast an admiring eye over her. “Lucia presents well, though, doesn’t she? Alexandricus has chosen wisely.”

“Too skinny for me,” Libo added.

Carbo grinned. “Not to mention clean.”

Rufinius was gleaming in the polished ornate body armor of a tribune. Beside him, his bride was draped in a long white sheath of silk, a belt knotted at her waist, symbolizing that she was now bound to her husband. Around her neck hung a string of enormous pearls, souvenired from the Han caravan, presented to Lucia by General Saikan as a wedding present and, in essence, her dowry.

“What’s with Lord Saikan?” Carbo wondered at the man’s scowl. “You’d think he’d just been served a plate of Parthian beans.”

Appias shrugged and whispered, “Shhh … The burden of command.”

The wedding ceremony had been kept small and discrete, conducted at sunset in a picturesque corner of the oasis where the air was cool and birds occupied the reed beds. Only Saikan, accompanied by his top officers and the surviving members of Rufinius’s old contubernium, were present to bear witness, with Mena standing in for a priest and a former cultrarius, now an optio, on hand to wield the sacrificial knife. The whole army was aware of proceedings, though, with lookouts posted in overlooking trees.

The hag offered the usual items to the gods and then a young white heifer, taken from the Han, was slaughtered in the newly wedded couple’s honor. After picking through its intestines and inspecting its liver, Mena proclaimed a long and happy marriage with the birth of a boy and a girl to be a gift to them from the gods.

Rufinius and Lucia kissed.

A signal was raised from the lookouts and an ululation grew from 5,000 voices beyond the reeds.

*

Comfortable beneath skins of fox to keep out the desert chill, Lucia snuggled into Rufinius lying behind her. “A boy and a girl? Now that
would
be a gift from the gods. In fact, I believe only a god could get me with child. Certainly no man ever has.”

“Mena is a witch in looks and demeanor only,” said Rufinius sleepily. “Have no faith in claims that she has the ear of any immortal.”

“Don’t spoil it. I would have a young Rufinius to take over for his father, and a young Lucia to join our family with another and have our worth increased.”

“A patrician family perhaps, with senatorial ties.”

“I said don’t spoil it. And don’t go to sleep. We have a tent all to ourselves at last, Tribune, and no need to hide. You and I have noisy work to do.”

“We leave here tomorrow and strike again across the desert. You have to leave me some strength.”

“Definitely not, especially on the evening of our wedding. Don’t tease me with this feigned indifference, husband. I intend to suck the strength right out of you on this night and on every night hereafter.” She searched his eyes. “That is my legal obligation as your wife. Only now can I admit to you that having your cock inside me is my preferred state. If you could but march and fuck at the same time, my world would be complete.”

Rufinius grinned at the picture that formed in his mind: leading the army while Lucia straddled him. He traced his finger around her ear. “I like the new you.”

“You like Lucia more than Andica?”

“You know I would have you any which way. Lucia or Andica, either is yours to choose, but only once we have moved on from the immediate realm ruled by this Chanyu Zhizhi. Until then, the golden whore must remain buried somewhere in the desert.”

“You say the nicest things.” Lucia turned to face her husband, took his cock between her hands and moved them back and forth, her own juices on him still slick and slippery.

“Are you never satisfied?” he asked.

“I believe I have already answered that. In truth I am pleased to be thrusting it upon a man, rather than having a man thrust it in me. It makes a pleasant change.”

“Don’t remind me.”

“Does it bother you that I am not a virgin?”

“I resent the life forced on you. As for whether you’re a virgin, neither am I, so we’re even.”

“It’s different for a man.”

Rufinius kissed her neck and turned her around and brought her to him so that her nipples pressed against his chest. “I would value experience more, Lucia Alexandrica. But allow me to imagine that I have been your one and only, if just because I can’t bear the thought of another’s hands on you.”

“There have been none like you in my past, Rufinius Alexandricus,” she whispered, taking his face in her hands and searching his eyes. “You are the first of a one and only kind. Now lay back and try to rest.” She kissed him again, wriggled beneath the furs, and took him wholly within her mouth.

The Han caravan was immense. It added to the legionaries’ baggage train, stretched the resources protecting it, and trailed a dust cloud that rose into the hard blue sky like an immense brown veil, a towering signal to all banditry of fruit potentially ripe for the plucking. Attacks from Sogdian horsemen and camel riders became more frequent, raids that often saw whole numbers of wagons driven off.

These, however, were almost always recovered, the Sogdians too impatient to drive their winnings far from the column before assessing the worth of their thieving. This activity, however, slowed the march to a crawl and very little headway was made for a time, the defenses of the previous camp sometimes visible from the next evening’s ramparts.

At Rufinius’s instruction, Appias saw that lumber recovered from the Han caravan was turned to the making of palisade sticks, which each legionary now carried, along with a baggage pole, two pila, and cooking and digging implements. The fixing of fish-scale armor to Roman shields continued apace, the legionaries who carried these veiled scuta feeling almost immortal. And, at the close of each day’s march came the excavation of trenches and the throwing up of earthworks, stone used for walls when available.

“Tribune!” shouted an optio. His company of legionaries fixing palisade sticks in place stopped their work and saluted.

Rufinius, inspecting the camp’s defenses, returned the salute, and climbed the berm thrown up earlier to better appreciate the handiwork. The sharply pointed sticks were angled out at the blackness of the desert beyond in the correct manner and pattern.

“Good job,” he told the men.

“Primor …” said the optio, a man of stocky build with a deep scar across the bridge of his nose. He seemed nervous and concerned about speaking, but worry had overcome his fear of approaching the legion’s most senior officer.

“Speak, optio. I’m not the enemy,” said Rufinius.

“Yes, primor.” He shuffled from one foot to the other, seemingly unable to find firm footing. “Primor, we have marched now for almost two seasons. My men and I feel … we feel like Ulysses, wandering forever. When do we reach our goal?”

“Why do you care to know?” Rufinius asked, grinning. “Do you have someplace else to be?”

The optio refused to be put as ease. “Primor, there is a story going around that we are marching to the end of the earth, to the gates of Hades itself. You saw the men we fought – the Han. What strange soldiers were they, all looking as if they were taken from the same mold. Their weapons were strange, along with their manner of fighting. And what of their gods?”

“You were victorious over the Han, that’s all that matters. Take strength from it. The Roman gladius was more than a match for anything they threw at us. Perhaps the soldiers of the Han looked on us and saw not men but monsters, for it’s us who are the strangers in this land. Certainly you hacked your way through them. Don’t fear the Han, or any man. You are Roman legionaries. Never forget that. As for their gods, either they deserted the Han, or Bellona and Mars and the gods of the Roman pantheon trounced them.”

The men looked at each other and nodded, the arguments put forward by the tribune being good and solid.

“This talk of marching to the end of the world,” Rufinius continued, “where some among us are convinced the entrance to Hades can be found … Is not Hades a place of fire? If that is our destination, wouldn’t it be getting hotter? But haven’t you noticed that instead it grows colder? If it wasn’t for a new bride in my bed, my teeth would be chattering nightly.”

Now several of the men laughed.

“While I think of it, aren’t the Gates of Hades in Taenarum or Solfatara? I can promise you, Graecia is not our destination and nor is it Italia. Men … one more season, I’m told, and we will have reached our goal. There we will begin soldiering for the King of the Xiongnu, earning the right to be wealthy landowners. We have come a very long way – that’s true. Soon these deserted lands will end.”

“Yes, tribune,” said the optio, amid murmurings of assent from his men.

Rufinius and Appias continued further along the rampart to a section still being dug from the soft, weathered stone.

“One more season’s march. You believe that?” asked Appias.

“We have been on this desert for many long months. It must end sooner or later and Saikan claimed it would be a march of three seasons.”

“And you believe him?”

“There is reason informing my view.”

“Which is?”

“Commerce, Appias. Have you seen all the silks and pearls we now convey? I have never laid eyes on such wealth. It had to have come from somewhere. Do not doubt there is a rich place beyond the meeting of sky and land. We will soon be there, doing what we legionaries do best – fighting and building.”

“Drinking and fucking. That’s what Libo and Carbo would say.”

Rufinius grinned. “We’re good at that, too. There are better times ahead. I can feel it. We are engaged in an adventure beyond anything experienced by Romans before us. Think on it. Already we have beheld what no Roman has witnessed. Not even Alexander the Macedonian who conquered the world ventured this far to the east, and still we march on.”

“Many Romans feel as that optio does. As you said, we are strangers in a strange land and every day we march further from everything we know.”

“And you, Appias? How do you feel? Does the emptiness grow the further we march from your wife?”

Appias breathed deep. “I can’t deny that I miss Quinta anew. I wonder if she has returned to Rome. Does she make sacrifices to the gods on my behalf? When will she consider that I have passed from this earth, never to return? When will she remarry? She is a fine woman with an equally fine bosom. Perhaps even now the suitors circle her as they did Penelope. But there will be no Odysseus arriving home to dispense retribution.”

Rufinius placed a hand on his friend’s shoulder.

“You are lucky, Rufinius,” Appias continued. “I envy you. You have Lucia, a prize won for you by the loyalty of an army.”

“Don’t doubt that I am grateful to the gods
and
the centuries for that.”

Below them, legionaries toiled with picks, digging at the stone.

“They would do that and more for their tribune, Alexandricus.” Appias looked around him at the legionaries toiling with refreshed muscles in the presence of Rufinius. “Remember Optio Fabianus’s question – will the women in the Han lands we march to even fuck like us? What do you think?”

Rufinius smiled. “Surely it will be a grand undertaking to find out.”

“I am beginning to sound like Libo,” Appias ventured, shaking his head.

“All men have the same needs. I have seen several of the Han women. They are very small and compact, a condition which they prize and which their clothes accentuate. They look like elegant girls, though they are definitely women.”

“Are they slaves?”

“According to Saikan, the pretty ones are called concubines.”

“And that is?”

“A woman kept for sexual purposes. More like a second, third or fourth wife, behind the main wife.”

“I found it difficult enough keeping one wife happy,” said Appias. “I imagine the politics of the bedroom would become complicated, the competition between the women for favors extreme. And you say you have met some of these … concubines?”

“Several. They traveled with the senior officers and some of the wealthier merchants,” answered Rufinius. “And I do not doubt that they fuck every bit as grandly as a Roman woman.”

“What’s that!” shouted one of the legionaries toiling on the rock.

The exclamation distracted Rufinius and Appias, who gazed out beyond the wall. In the near distance, a thin line of fire appeared to be spreading in the darkness. The fire grew in intensity and then appeared to be coming toward the camp, moving quickly.

And suddenly a humming sound filled the air and several men nearby fell dead, struck down by arrows. Legionnaires started to run here and there, attempting to flee from the singing rain of death. Everywhere arrowheads were burying themselves deep in the ground and transfixing many men.

Rufinius ran for cover behind a mound of dirt that had been topped with a stack of palisade sticks yet to be set in the rampart. From this vantage point, the tribune watched the approaching fire as it divided into individual fireballs that seemed to skim and dart across the night. Along with the sounds made by the falling arrows, a strange noise began to assault the legionaries’ ears. It was a screaming that seemed human but also not, a howl that was not far from a battle cry.

Rufinius searched around for Appias as other legionaries joined him behind the palisade sticks, but could not find the camp prefect among the confusion.

The darting, dancing, shrieking balls of fire advanced and grew in size. They began to ascend the unfinished section of rampart, herded there by bandits on horseback prodding them with lances. And suddenly these fires were inside the camp itself and Rufinius saw that each individual flaming ball ran on short powerful legs. And the shrieks were cries of pain, the running fire being a large herd of full grown pigs set alight and driven into the encampment. The air filled with still more humming arrows and the smell of burning flesh and pitch as the pigs galloped into the encampment, bursting through tents and plowing into wagons, setting all alight in their path.

And then the men on horseback were clambering up the unfinished rampart, spearing legionaries with their lances or firing arrows in the Parthian and Xiongnu way as they rode, their hands free of the reins.

Everywhere there was shouting and screaming. And then, from somewhere, a cornicen was heard calling the legionaries to battle. Rufinius too, exhorted the men to fight, standing and drawing his gladius. The legionaries overcame their panic and responded, grabbing their javelins and dispatching the pigs, ending their torment with javelin thrusts. They also set upon the attackers, spearing their horses and sending riders to their deaths. Attention then turned to the fires; they spared little of their precious water and instead beating at them with anything that came to hand, from sword blades to animal skins.

The rain of death became sporadic and Rufinius was joined by other legionaries as he set upon the riders now loose in the camp. The tribune opened the belly of one enemy’s horse and jumped on the back of another, ending the rider’s life with a slice across his throat. Now mounted on a horse, he turned on the invaders, riding among them, thrusting and chopping with his sword.

Soon, all around lay the dead and dying horsemen and their mounts, the numbers of Roman defenders far more plentiful than they. The fires too were extinguished, the air thick with the acrid smoke of burned leather, and pig, and the smoldering black pitch covering their hindquarters that had been set alight to drive the animals mad with fear and pain.

Rufinius walked among the legionaries, searching for raiders who still breathed, ending their lives and the lives of their horses and livestock. It was then that he came upon Appias, who was lying on his back, his eyes closed and the pallor of his skin deathly, an arrow through his chest.