The sapphire sea around the great southern port city of Massilia was still, its surface smooth as oil. The low coastal bluffs were riddled with pits, caves and niches – the honeycomb of Christian catacombs within a bleak portent of what was to come. For atop the cliffs, a broad, iron line of men and siege engines faced the city’s walls, their standards hanging limp in the stinking hot air, outlined by the unblemished summer sky. It was the first of the dies caniculares , you see – the sweltering dog days when Sirius rose with the sun each morning. Days that most men spent in shade or in the frigidarium at the baths. Days that turned wine sour and drove hounds mad.
Yet I had no choice but to stand in that noonday heat, outside the high, strong walls and gates with the few legions I could risk bringing away from my ever-more encroached-upon borders. The feather-helmed Cornuti, the bronze-scaled Lancearii, two cohorts of the Second Italica and the First Minervia formed the ox-horn line on the grassy countryside, barring any exit from the landward side of the city just as Caesar and his armies had done hundreds of years before. Down below the shimmering cliffs, a small flotilla of triremes blockaded the fortified harbour – penning in two galleys and many trade liburnians stacked with salted fish, wine, oil, coral and cork. In truth, the blockade was paltry – as was my ‘fleet’ in those contested waters – but it was all I could do. I simply could not allow the bastard within Massilia’s walls any route of escape.
I scoured the battlements, seeing the iron helms of the rogue cohort of the Seventh Gemina up there, quite rightly veiling all but their eyes and mouths – for they should be ashamed of their treacherous deeds! An ancient and once-proud legion. And to think it was my Comitatus of tribesmen whose loyalty had been doubted!
I was dragged from my fiery thoughts by squabbling voices nearby. A knot of legionaries were sheepishly reporting to Batius some problem with the hundreds of ladders we had brought up. ‘Too short?’ Batius seethed, his eyes flicking from the ladders resting in the grass to Massilia’s battlements.
One legionary explained the man responsible for measuring the ladders wasn’t the brightest, and had counted the required length using his fingers – of which he possesses only nine. Batius dragged his fingers down his face like claws. ‘In the name of…’ he gasped. ‘You’ll just have to bloody well stand on each other’s shoulders when you reach the top.’
The big man swung away from them and stomped over to me.
‘Trouble with the ladders,’ he growled, wiping the sweat from his stubbled head. His eyes never ceased to appraise and probe the defences, occasionally flicking to the red roof of the Temple of Apollo, jutting from within, raised on the mound at the heart of the city. ‘But it matters not: Maximian cannot hold Massilia with just a single cohort.’
‘That’s what I fear. He knows he is trapped here. Like any rat on a doomed vessel, he will right now be scampering in search of a way out. And Maximian is an extremely shrewd rodent.’
My eyes ran over the land-facing walls and the naval blockade again. No way out. Was I overestimating the old dog?
‘If we storm the place we will take it,’ Krocus posited. ‘But only four centuries of his cohort are on the walls. The rest…’
‘The rest are embedded within the city,’ I finished for him. I had besieged and stormed towns before. I knew what lay inside – all of the men with me probably knew also: barricades of rubble and timber across tight streets; marksmen on the rooftops, ready to rain arrows and javelins on any down below; flagstones thirsty for blood. The cicada song sounded like a thousand screaming voices, and I felt myriad eyes upon me – those of my arrayed men and those of the treacherous legionaries on Massilia’s battlements… and those most wide and terrified eyes of the trapped citizens, cowering, daring to peek over the parapet from a section of wall near the descent towards the harbour. Romans. People, many of whom would die today under the flashing blades of my forces. People who had neither supported Maximian nor solicited his presence. Maximian, I thought, seeing the fat drunkard’s face, those hooded, presumptuous eyes. First his boy, Maxentius, had tried to skewer me on the end of a hired blade, now the old bastard himself thought he could wrench my hard-won station out from under me like a rug. A cold wind swept over my heart.
‘Fall upon the city with everything,’ I said, sweeping a hand across the array of stone-throwers, the two high wooden war towers and the somewhat squat ladders. ‘Break the gates, take the walls, crush the Gemina scum.’ I saw the watching citizens from the corner of my eye as I added: ‘Do whatever it takes.’
Batius’ face hardened in determination. ‘It will be done.’
The big man turned away and howled, snatching up a standard. ‘Cornuti, for-waaaaaard! ’
His cry was joined by a hundred other commanders and the thousands in their ranks and then drowned out by a dozen keening horns and the eerie groan of stressed timber as the war towers rolled forward, rocking slightly on the uneven grass. The din was joined by a steady thunder of marching boots and clanking iron as my legions advanced behind the towers, their armour glinting like the scales of a giant fish. The Gemina legionaries on the walls bristled, turning ballistae up there to train them on my forces, bending bows and lifting spears, just waiting for the range to be good.
I felt my heart rap on my ribs as the onagers creaked and croaked, wooden arms bent back and loaded with man-sized rocks, crews looking to me and my standard bearers to give the order to loose the great catapults. I raised a hand, one finger extended. I saw what would happen were I to drop it: the rocks hurtling through the air to shatter the parapet and stain the fine summer’s day with a storm of dark dust and ruined bodies; the swaying war towers would follow up to engage the walls near those weakened points, the legions flowing up the wooden steps within and pouring onto the battlements, the blades being drawn…
A thick clunk and a grumble of timber – not from any war machine – halted me, finger still raised. My eyes stared, unblinking, at the tall, arched, bronze-strapped city gates as they parted. I saw Krocus stagger back a few paces and fumble to draw his sword – his first instinct to protect me.
‘A sally?’ he gasped.
And a sally it was, but not of soldiers. Instead, a tumble of citizens came forth, in rags and robes, faces white, wide and tear-streaked. A few hundred of them. They wailed, they fell to their knees facing me, they threw up their hands in plea and panic as a maw of Cornuti spear tips corralled them. I saw behind them in the shadow of the gateway two Gemina legionaries sprawled and still, one stained red, a quartet of young men lying crumpled beside them, their simple citizens’ garb equally sullied with ripped flesh and lifeblood. The battle for the gates had come from within.
‘They’re giving me the city,’ I said, the words spilling from my lips like an escaped fancy.
At once, the Gemina legionaries on the battlements heads’ flicked towards the gates, craning to see what had happened. In moments, they knew, and they disappeared from the parapet in a heartbeat, back into the maze of stockades and traps they had no doubt riddled the streets with.
The gates were open, but the fight was still to come.
*
If I thought for a moment that the opened gates meant the battle was all but won, I was horribly wrong. My legions edged through the broad main way under a hail of sling stones, spears and arrows from Maximian’s Gemina men posted all around the rooftops. I moved with Batius under testudo of Cornuti shields, creeping towards each building to let a handful of men slip from the shield-shell like passengers disembarking from a ship and slip inside the palaces and temples. Moments later, the screams of close combat sounded from up on the rooftop and Gemina bodies would plummet and splash like over-ripe cherries on the flagstones. At one juncture, we found ourselves at a crossroads, with four tall marble halls surrounding us, the archers atop each gleefully emptying their quivers down upon the perfect killing pit into which we had wandered. I saw the Italica men stranded in open space, ballistae on the rooftops spitting down upon them, ripping great troughs of red through their ranks, screams of the dying biting at me like crows.
‘With me!’ Batius yelled, waving sixteen Cornuti men with him into the ballistae-topped building, the clatter of their ascending bootsteps and yelling and smashing of iron sounding from the stairs.
Inspired by the big man as I had been since boyhood, I called to another group. ‘The archers,’ I barked, pointing up through cracks in the testudo to the century of bowmen stationed on the rooftop adjacent to the one Batius was tackling. We streaked across a stretch of open space, arrows whacking down around us and one clanging from my jewelled battle helm. The cool shade and the close echo of the building’s interior was like a slap to my senses. I swung my eyes to and fro to adjust to the dimness, and a Cornuti man was swift to shoulder me clear of a thrown spear. I saw the culprit – a Gemina legionary on the mezzanine. Without thinking, I plucked the thrown spear from the post it had smashed into and turned it upon the thrower, the lance sailing up there and taking the soldier in the breastbone. He doubled over the mezzanine with a gurgle and mouthful of blood and hung there like a wet garment. As we sped up the stairs towards the roof I glanced at the dead man – the dead Roman – and realised what a step I had taken… what a black step down a night-dark road.
But the chaos of the fray engulfed me again as we emerged onto the sun-bleached stone roof and confronted the archers. The bowmen loosed at us in panic but I was quick to raise my shield, peppered with arrows a trice later. Then the shield became a fist, breaking limbs smashing faces, my sword sweeping out at the archers. They wore mail, most of them, but they stood not a chance against my hardened regiment. It was with a savage triple-hack that I drove the officer among them from the edge of the roof, his scream cut short when he burst across the edge of a fountain down below, staining the water red.
Panting, snarling, I felt the dark road in my mind grow darker, seeing corpses of my kith littering the sides of the way. War is never glorious, nor sweet, but this was the most galling of clashes I had ever endured. And the worst was yet to come.
‘Domine!’ a Cornuti centurion, down on the street below and leading the testudo, cried. ‘The way to the temple hill is almost open.’
I followed his gaze to see the rising street and the crude barrier that had been erected across it, made of tipped wagons and crates, topped with a thick watch of Gemina legionaries. ‘Onwards,’ I rasped, waving the small knot of Cornuti with me back down to street level. I almost collided with Batius down there, he emerging from the ballistae building at the same time as I stumbled from the archers’ eyrie. The big man’s face was whiter than sand, yet he was not injured that I could see. ‘Batius?’
He looked at me, through me, his eyes wide.
‘They’re holding firm,’ the Cornuti centurion howled back down the rising street, cupping a sword slash to his shoulder, staggering. The Gemina on the crude barrier were not for moving.
‘Batius? I need you now,’ I croaked, clamping a hand to his shoulder. ‘As always before.’
He seemed to snap from his odd spell at this, nodding albeit shakily. But on he came with me as I joined with the main body of the Cornuti again and we surged uphill. The Gemina men screamed in defiance, crouching, spears and swords levelled.
A spiculum thrummed through the air and skewered one standing atop the wall of wagons through the belly. The soldier’s mouth opened in a silent scream as his guts burst from the wound like an infected boil pricked by a pin, and he toppled onto the alley floor with a crunch. The other two Gemina men launched their missiles in return before a ruck of my legionaries forged against the wagon wall, which wobbled, swayed and eventually toppled. The Cornuti ranks surged across the fallen vehicles like a river shredding a dam, slaughtering the Gemina in their hundreds before racing on up the lane towards the city forum. I led the Lancearii in their wake up that crimson, corpse-strewn street, each of those javelin throwers speckled in red and with just a few missiles left – the rest embedded in the fallen, broken traitors’ bodies scattered throughout the city. On we went up the slope towards Massilia’s heart: the echo and clatter of boots rapped like scattering birds in the tight street, then fell away as we poured out into the great open square around the Temple of Apollo.
‘Where is he?’ I demanded, my head switching in every direction. My legionaries had the square; there was no doubt about that. The surviving eighty or so Gemina soldiers were kneeling at the ends of Cornuti spears, sweating, gulping, mouthing prayers. They now saw the folly of taking Maximian’s bribe. But where was Maximian? I saw nothing but empty, echoing colonnades, mockingly silent, staring statues and an incongruously cheerful, babbling fountain. A few of my legionaries emerged from within the temple, shaking their heads. How could it be? My forces had swept into the city brutally yet methodically, being sure to close in on this point from every direction. Maximian had to be here. Had he resorted to scuttling through a water tunnel or the like to evade me? No, surely not, for the old cur was no longer spry or thin enough for such a feat. I looked all around me. He had to be in the city somewhere, for the walls were mine, the gates were…
My gaze snagged on the open end of the forum and the terraced descent to the harbour. Over the mosaic of red tiles and white marble, I saw only one thing: the postern gate down there by the coast road. It was the one spot my legionaries outside had left unwatched. Beyond it, on the coast road, was an odd sight: the tiny forms of two soldiers, running alongside a plump rider on what looked like a badly struggling donkey. The soldiers carried sacks with them, and I saw the sparkle of what looked like golden sand dropping and spilling from their burdens as they went. Coins – coins from my stolen treasury.
I heard a low growl then realised it was my own. ‘With me!’ I barked.
Someone brought Celeritas to me, handing me the reins, and at once I was at a spearhead of men. We cantered down the broad, flagstoned way to the harbour, then out the postern gate. We caught up with the fleeing trio easily, and I dismounted into a run while Celeritas was still moving at a gentle trot. The pair of Gemina legionaries now dropped their sacks of booty and turned to face me in fright, faces agape in horror but their well-practised arms going for their swords at once. Steel sang as I tore my spatha from its sheath and swept it up. One of the Gemina mongrels fell, his face and shoulder cut deep. Batius blocked a wild blow from the other then drove his blade hilt-deep into the cur’s guts.
Just ahead, the labouring donkey brayed and the well-fed snake on its back turned his head, face drawn and eyes bulging. I rushed forward and hauled the bastard down. He fell from the saddle onto his back with a weighty thud , coughing and retching, blinded by the tossed-up dust.
‘You fat skin of wine!’ I roared, snatching at the folds of his collar and hauling him up a few inches off the ground, nose to nose with me where I crouched. ‘You dared to steal from me? Have you not learned – have you not seen enough of me over the years to understand?’ Hatred throbbed through me as I saw a reel of memories: the wicked games of Diocletian and Galerius; their beguiling of Father, convincing him to abandon Mother and me; the countless deaths during the persecutions and the threats to my loved ones… the threats to me; the complacent demands that I should relinquish my title and my territory to them. ‘Nobody will ever take from me again. Nobody! ’ I cast him back down then dashed the hilt of my sword on his mouth, sending his head snapping back with a crack and staining his teeth red. Then I positioned my sword tip at his chest. ‘This is it for you… this is the end!’
It was a dark, nightmarish world for those few moments, but as my muscles tensed and the blade quivered, ready to split his breast and ruin his heart, I heard a voice that hauled me from the brink.
‘Father, no!’ I looked up, the spell of fiery hatred sideswiped by the word.
Little Crispus came running down the hill path from the grassy flats outside the city’s land walls. I blinked, certain I had succumbed to madness. But no, the top of a newly arrived wagon jutted from the crest of the slope behind him; here he was, my dark-skinned, broad-faced boy, the lasting echo of my love with sweet Minervina. His expression, however, was one that I hoped I would never see again. His face was twisted, mouth wailing, eyes disbelieving.
‘Grandpapa!’ he cried, arms flailing as he fell down the last few steps of the descent to skid onto his knees beside Maximian and throw his arms around him like a shield. I remained there, frozen, the sword point still hovering at my foe’s breast, my dear son just inches from its edge.
‘Constantine, no!’ another voice wailed. I knew who it was without turning back to the dirt path on the hillside. Fausta fell to hug Maximian also, weeping, her arms cradling her shaking father, her glassy eyes searching my face. ‘Please, Constantine… no.’
After an eternity of struggle within, I stepped back, the quivering spatha falling limp, the tip dropping and finding a berth in the dirt. Maximian let out a rattling breath of relief.
Does that make me a merciful man, I ask you? Or perhaps you might think me a weak man – a fool, even? Neither bold nor ruthless as a true emperor should be. But damn, I defy you to be there as I was, to look your beloved and your progeny in the eye, see their tears, hear their heartsick weeping, and not acquiesce. If you think otherwise, then it is you who is the fool. And if you doubt me, then you will soon see you were wrong to do so. Bold, aye. Ruthless, utterly. For it was only a stay of execution I granted the old bastard.
That moment outside Massilia would prove to be the eye of the storm, a storm that would erupt again all too soon when Maximian finally faced justice… a storm that would change the world.