The day after that the orders came: They were displaced, evicted from the farm they had held since the Tarquins ruled.
Come with me, Quintus implored the shadowy figure in the water.
I cannot.
I will win back these lands, he vowed.
Whatever comes, you will see me again.
They had sold his mother's jewelry that should have gone to Quintus's wife, if ever he should be able now to marry and if any decent gens would welcome him. They had taken space in one of the insulae within the City itself, and the old man had declared his intent of pleading his case to some of the greatest men in the Senate.
Life as a client for such as he—as well ask the cliff to melt as the old eagle to bend his neck and smile. Quintus knew that shuttling between the insula and his patron's house on the Palatine shortened his grandfather's life as surely as a fever. It had been harder to be a sycophant, Quintus thought, than to lose at Carrhae.
With each attempt at a bow, each delayed petition, the knowledge came upon him. Their family had no skill at this type of battle. They would never see their farm again.
He thought his grandsire knew it too.
Neither ever spoke the thought aloud.
In the end, the old man had been relieved to die. He had secured for Quintus the little that he could—an appointment as a tribune in Crassus's service. Perhaps the grandson's more supple back could secure what he could not—a return to favor and their old home. If not, it was honorable service, or an honorable death.
Shouts boomed out, echoing in the marsh like a Greek actor's tragic speech, made louder by the mask. The voices held an edge of rage, made uglier by panic.
Quintus flicked a glance around his pitiful command. His men sat, heads between knees. Even in the dark, he could see that their faces wore the glazed, far-away look of men about to turn children again, retreating from an intolerable world.
Rufus met his eyes and shrugged. His hand fell to his gladius. If the men could not or would not march when the order came, it would be the blade for them, as it had been earlier.
Quintus could not permit that. And there was something he could do. At the very least, he could gather information and perhaps use it to keep his men alive a little longer.
Pulling away from the centurion, he crept forward, his boots making sucking noises in the marsh, chafing at his aching feet. He thought to discard them, then changed his mind.
He could be no more welcome at this staff meeting than he had been at any of the others. Lucilius would raise both supercilious brows. Someone else might sniff, as if at manure brought within the Senate chamber. Crassus might damn him with a frown.
Surprising, wasn't it, this close to death, how little any of that mattered?
There was no Via Principalis, no orderly encampment in the marsh. Quintus wondered if Crassus had ever seen the need for such a thing, even when he was victorious. Someone had made a half-hearted attempt to set up a tent for the proconsul. It leaned drunkenly against some brush and a half-drowned tree, and every time fresh shouts erupted, it appeared to sag. Even the wings of the Eagle on guard outside seemed to droop as if the standard itself was ashamed.
It had been one thing for Quintus to approach the proconsul enthroned in the midst of a proper camp, with all the other patricians around him, their stares casting him back to his days as a client, cringing on the Palatine. This shabbiness no more meant "proconsul" or "Rome" than some nameless fat man in robes, wallowing drunk in an alley, was the Pontifex Maximus.
They were all going to die, anyhow, weren't they? He was damned if he would observe the false niceties of rank even in death. Squaring his shoulders as a tribune ought to do, he pushed into the sorry tent, drew himself into the salute...
...and stared straight into Hades.
He had thought on the battlefield outside Carrhae that he was a witness to nefas, the unspeakable, incomprehensible evil that all Romans fled as they fled impiety. Nefas was not just slaughter: Had that been so, Crassus's earlier campaign against Spartacus might have defined it, and the gods would have punished him.
But this ... this betrayal!
The Surena stood quietly as one of his men—Quintus would have bet the land he no longer owned that the prince could, but would not speak perfectly adequate Latin—finished his translation of his master's words.
"And he offers you truce and friendship on behalf of Orodes the Great King..." a howl of outrage rose from the assembled officers, drowning out the Parthian's other titles, "...in return for surrender."
Crassus forced himself to his feet. He was sixty years old and always had the best of everything—food, wine, protection. Why shouldn't he have looked well-preserved, the old mummy? Now, grief and—Quintus had to admit—fear made him look years older than Quintus's grandfather at his death. A torch guttered, then flared up, showing Crassus's face in every detail. Almost as red as the torchlight, it was contorted with a coward's rage. Under the thinning hair, tousled out of its usual careful trim, veins throbbed at the commander's temples.
If he died now, we might escape with our lives, Quintus thought, then despised himself for it.
The torchlight picked out Lucilius's sharp features, intent on his master, and the tall Parthian was watching him too as he might have watched an old dog soil the floor. Put him down now or wait? The question seemed to play about The Surena's scornful eyes and lips.
"Surrender?" Crassus demanded.
"Say, rather, you agree to return to your own place after swearing suitable oaths of friendship to my king." The Surena's words were as silken as his banners, and as deadly. His eyes flicked over to Vargontius and paused: brief respect for the way his twenty surviving men—out of four cohorts—had tried to fight their way through the Parthian ranks to their fellows. The Surena had even ordered his troops to withdraw, a vast honor guard, as the twenty limped into Carrhae.
"I will see you all in Hades first!" Crassus shouted. "And go there myself!"
"That might be arranged," remarked Cassius, never raising his voice. "Out there—" he gestured. "The men are angry. They didn't like leaving the wounded for our friend here to kill. They didn't like it at all."
The mutiny of a Legion—nefas such as Quintus had never imagined. And yet, he knew how close his men were to turning on their leaders. Desertion was better than mutiny, he thought and half-turned to go back to his men. Perhaps they could escape the swamp—but for what? To flee into the desert? Even properly equipped, his Legion had found the desert to be an ordeal. And thirst, they said, was an excruciating way to die.
As painful as a cross?
He might be out of choices.
The torch sputtered again, casting the features of Lucilius into high relief. He leaned forward with the intentness of a cur watching two larger dogs fight for mastery of the pack. Once he saw a winner begin to emerge, he would dart in and slash the hamstrings of his enemy. Lucilius's eyes shifted from Crassus to his officer, flashed to The Surena, then back to the Romans. He gestured at the man leaning on his shoulder, the companion of a hundred dice games, and the man got up. Quintus backed up against the entrance to the tent, but the man slipped out beneath the soiled fabric.