‘The hook-nosed killer who nearly opened your throat… was … my… man,’ Maxentius snarled at me. ‘Yes it was one of my hot-headed courtiers who sent him, and I chastened him for it. I almost had the flesh lashed from his back for it,’ he continued through clenched teeth, his face twisted and creased like a wolf’s. He was tall now, tall and regal, with the air of a leader. In truth that scared me more than anything else. Gone was the boy. Gone was the friend. With his next words… all but gone was hope.
‘But I wish… I wish I had sent him after all.’
The stark oath echoed around the tall lobby, striking and dying in the high eaves only after an eternity. Sickly sweet and wholly inappropriate white curls of incense smoke coiled from the cracks in the door leading to Galerius’ death room, thinning into wisps between Maxentius and me. So absurd: me and my one-time friend in the bowels of the Herdsman’s Golden Dungeon, that friendship now drawn tight like the last sinew holding a head to a body. Never has the future been so riven in so few breaths. My blood turned hot like the August sun.
Now I must explain: I had travelled to Romuliana with great caution, to give the Herdsman his last audience, but also to once and for all assert my secession, just as Lactantius urged me to – cutting all ties with the Tetrarchy: gods, emperors, legacies… everything. What kind of fool, you might think, would wander into his enemy’s lair? Well, two whole legions of mine were poised at the Danubian port town just a short march away, brimming on the hastily armed ships of the Classis Germanica. More, an entire cohort had escorted me to the northern gates of this sparkling grave.
Yes, if there were to be any acid words exchanged, it would be with the putrid, decaying Herdsman. And the cur had not disappointed. In the Augustus of the East’s death chamber, he had beckoned me to him. I approached cautiously, stooping to put my ear within arm’s reach of his rubbery, flaccid lips. He merely prised his mouth open like a crack in a stinking shell, his brown, rotting teeth and grey, receding gums parting and his blue tongue lashing once to whisper in my ear with a breath that reeked of rotting flesh: Pretender.
So yes, I had come prepared for some vicious, barbed assault, but not from my boyhood friend. I didn’t even know he was to be there. When first I saw Maxentius step from Galerius’ death room I was filled with admiration for him: as brave if not braver than me for coming to face the man he had directly humiliated in battle just a few short years ago. My next thought was of how I might build bridges with my old friend. I was prepared to humbly explain why I had ordered his father’s death.
But now? Now madness had me. Even through the cautious first few words I had exchanged with him, and during that brief and golden moment when we both laughed – when, against all the fates, it seemed like we were young again – I knew the flames were taking hold. Often people cite me for my temper more than anything else. But damn, that day I proved them all right.
I held up a finger and jabbed it across the room like a bowman taking aim. ‘Say it again, false prince.’ I trembled with fury – almost echoing Galerius’ taunt to me just a short while before. Was this the bullied becoming the bully? I took a step towards him. I did not plan it, but it shook him. He stepped back, shaking. Anger, fear? I wondered. Then he halted and his nostrils flared, his shoulders broadening like a man who would back away no more. But still I came at him.
He braced, his eyes alive with fire. ‘And what of Italia and Africa? How many years have I, this false prince you speak of, ruled those lands? When Severus came, when Galerius came to take Italia back from me, I crushed them, sent them and their proud, gleaming legions back to these lands.’ He said this as if Galerius was not even in the same province, let alone the adjacent room. ‘You? You – disinherited by your own sire, unworthy of the purple – have tangled with knots of barbarian raiders and no more in your northern bogs and heaths. Look upon yourself in a polished shield, Constantine, before you next curse another.’
It was like a vase of pitch landing upon a roaring fire. The accusation stuck to me, melted my last semblances of control, consumed me. ‘You did not defeat Galerius: his armies were rife with disease and lacking grain and water by the time you marched out to meet them. Even then it was only your snake of a father buying the venal hearts of Galerius’ regiments that secured victory for you! Your triumphs are fed to you by the hands of your generals. Like a dog… a dog! Your father was a mongrel. You are but a weak pup – with none of his guile and all of his failings.’ I came to within a finger’s width of him, nose-to-nose. ‘Once I thought you a friend, but I was wrong. You have been a bane to me, Maxentius. A dark, vile bane…’
My head dipped and I glared at him like an angered bull. ‘You remember the first time we met in Treverorum’s halls? That day, I should have helped Candidianus kick you into your grave.’
I saw the merest flash of something deep in his eyes. That frightened boy, lost within. But with a screech of iron, the boy vanished forever. He lurched backwards, drawing his sword in one fluid motion. The tip hovered at my throat. He glowered down the blade’s length. I tilted my chin up and glared back.
Absurd confidence on my part, you might think? Well, Batius and Krocus were only a room away. With just a shout I could have them in here and they would butcher Maxentius, even if he did strike me down first. It was the logic of a barbarian, and I see that now.
It was the creaking of the death chamber door that broke that terrible moment. Two of Galerius’ Joviani legionaries had emerged. They beheld us standing there like that, and I heard one of them chuckle darkly.
Maxentius and I looked at them, seeing the pair and – beyond – the rotting heap that was Galerius on his charnel bed, his grey head turned towards us on his pillow, his decaying maw open in an executioner’s smile. His shell of a body jounced as a racking, hollow laugh sailed out, wrapping around us like a colony of bats.
My eyes switched back to Maxentius and his to me. Rivulets of cold sweat ran down his face, wide-eyed, aghast. I realised my demeanour was identical. Had we been drawn here for just this purpose? To slay one another before our greatest foe? The Herdsman could take no blame were we to fell one another.
I stepped away first, then he.
He sheathed his sword.
Without a word, we parted, leaving the tomb of Galerius from opposite ends in heavy, swift strides.
The Herdsman had been denied his spectacle. Soon after, he would breathe his last.
But for Maxentius and me, there would be no such mercy.