Rome 4: The Art of War Read Online Free PDF Page A

owndaughter, but I have another still alive. I have never seen her, and she is raised as another man’s child, but even so, I understand some of what you mean when you say Caenis, Domitian and Sabinus are dear to you.
    ‘I swear to you now that I will protect the lives of these three with my own, or I will answer to you when you are emperor.’ He shifted a little, listening. ‘And now, my lord, I think you must dress, and go out to meet your legions.’
    This once, he was late, for I had already heard it: the susurration of a thousand sandalled feet scuffing over sand, the hush of men trained in silent assault.
    I was not under assault any more, but I had heard this sound so often in the pre-dawn dark of a raid on a village, or a town, or a cluster of caves in the desert, that it raised battle blood in my veins.
    An unexpected flap of tent skin made me jump: Demalion was there, and Hades take him but the lad was smiling. Not broadly, not with Titus’ ripe humour or Pantera’s scarred irony, but the sweep of his mouth was unquestionably up instead of down, and it was this small miracle, with its promise of a flask of Falerian, that told me I had crossed my own Rubicon; that there was, in truth, no going back.
    Demalion carried my tunic over his arm, and my armour pack, and my silvered greaves and the enamelled belt, worn through to the bronze beneath with three decades’ wear. With his help, I dressed as fast as I have ever done, and then I lifted the tent flap with my own hand.
    I looked left and right, to Titus and Mucianus who had come to join me. Behind were Pantera and Demalion.
    ‘Shall we go to meet our destiny?’
    Outside, the day felt newly minted; sharp, fresh, not yet too hot. My men were standing in parade order, line upon line, in their hundreds, their thousands, in their shining, dazzling tens of thousands:the IIIrd, the Xth, the XVth, that were my own, plus the IVth Scythians, the VIth Ferrata, and the ill-fated XIIth Fulminata commanded by Mucianus.
    There was a moment’s lingering stillness as each man took a breath and the suck of it rippled soundlessly back from the front lines to the rearmost.
    It held one last, long heartbeat, and then the morning split asunder, rent by a wall of sound as, with one voice, thirty thousand men hailed me in the word that made me their ruler.
    ‘ Imperator! ’

PART II
INTERNAL SPIES

C HAPTER F IVE
    Rome, 1 August AD 69
Sextus Geminus, centurion, the Praetorian Guard
    IT WAS RAINING on the morning of the lead lottery that was my first true introduction to Pantera; the kind of torrential rain that felt as if the gods had upended the Tiber and were pouring the result on to our heads; the kind of rain where you were drenched to the skin as soon as you stepped out of the door; the kind of rain that everyone said was a bad omen.
    But still, it was only rain; nobody was dying, and in any case, we were legionaries: if we were ordered out of barracks, we went.
    Vitellius had given the order. He didn’t believe in the power of omens and he wasn’t going to cancel his precious ceremony just because the sky was weeping, so we were called to parade in the forum at the second watch after dawn and had to stand in our cohorts, listening to him read his speech.
    We should have known it was bad then. I mean, really … we’d just marched the length of Italy, and risked our lives half a dozen times to put him on the throne. We’d fought other legions, justas good as us, when the men in them were our brothers, our fathers, cousins, friends and lovers. We’d killed men we admired and marched over their bleeding bodies in his name. Was it so hard to say thank you?
    I’ve done it without notes, he could have done the same. But no, he had to read from his sodden scroll and we had to stand and watch it disintegrate in his hands. When he was done, we had to about-face and slow-march to the top of the Capitol.
    There are three routes up that particular hill. If you’re feeling fit,