They’d had some 22,000 men—mostly legionary marines—when they’d first taken up their position on the Actium Promontory to face Octavian’s armies on the northern side of the Gulf of Ambracia. Twenty-two thousand men, over five hundred warships, and a substantial portion of Egypt’s treasury as a war chest, held in the largest of Cleopatra’s own vessels on the water. There was hope, given Antony’s excellence as a land commander, that the war would be hastily concluded. And since they outmanned Octavian by several thousand men, the hope was high on their side.
Vorenus stepped aside as two hollow-cheeked men came down the path, pulling a handcart. Three emaciated, slack gray faces stared out from the back, shaking in lifeless motion to the bounce of the wheels. Three more Roman dead from the malaria or the starvation or the despair—it was getting harder to tell the man-killer these days.
Vorenus watched them without emotion, without surprise. He’d seen too much of war to have much hope for anyone’s future in the field. There were too many unknowns in the mud, in the blood. Too many factors that no one could foresee.
Octavian’s refusal to engage them, for instance. Who could have imagined it? The armies had faced each other across the narrow opening to the Gulf of Ambracia for most of a few months now, yet despite the occasional minor skirmish they’d never met in battle. Antony had sent challenges. Octavian had refused them. Antony ordered his forces to build a bridge across the mouth of the gulf to bring his men up to this advanced position, on the same ground as his adversary. Octavian had just fallen back to the strong defensive positions he’d been building to the north. Fallen back and waited in quiet confidence.
And for good reason, they now knew. In a surprise attack, Octavian’s admiral, Agrippa, had struck to their south, attacking the western Peloponnese with several hundred war galleys and close to ten thousand marines. He’d cut off their line of retreat and their line of supplies, effectively trapping them here at Actium amid the swamps and the bugs and the slaughtering disease.
Vorenus had not been alone in asking Antony to attack Octavian en masse as soon as they’d built the bridge. There was a chance, they thought then, of overrunning the enemy position before Octavian’s camp and defenses were in order. They would push them back to their ships or die trying.
But Antony—confident, boisterous, arrogant Antony—had refused the advice. He’d sent personal challenges to Octavian. He called on Octavian’s honor, on Octavian’s manhood. The adopted son of Caesar met all with silence or simple refusal, content to hold tight the knot of the noose he’d settled around them: armies to north and south, and his more numerous fleet of ships—now that Agrippa’s vessels had rejoined them—settled just out to sea, blockading the gulf. They were trapped, like a fox run to a blind alley.
Vorenus felt his jaw clenching as he watched the cart rumble away in the dark, and he forced himself to take a deep breath, to relax as much as he could. Not thinking, he nearly choked on the thick stench that rolled into his lungs.
Coughing the air out again, he shook his doubts away and started to walk once more up the hill. It wasn’t his duty to question, he reminded himself. It was his duty to obey.
It was just death, after all.
* * *
Antony’s pavilion had more in common with a Roman villa than it did with the ragged tents that most of his men—eight men crowded to a shelter—had made their homes these months. The general’s quarters were solidly built: the cloth walls were framed square and taut with wooden bracing, the roof was tall and peaked by thick, stable poles crowned with flags that tonight hung unmoving in the still air, and the floor they encased was planked, perhaps the most rare but welcome of luxuries in an army camp.
The tendrils of smoke drifting from the roof venting and the slivers of light pooling out through gaps in the tent’s heavy sheets of cloth hinted at the brightness of the interior, so Vorenus squinted his eyes as he approached. Aside from the many lamps that would no doubt be lit within the tent, after all, he knew the light would be amplified by reflections from the gilded furnishings and other signs of opulence befitting the de facto throne room of Antony and the queen of Egypt. Sure enough, when the legionnaires on guard pulled aside the entrance flaps to admit Vorenus, he seemed for a moment to be stepping into the sun itself as he blinked away the shock of leaving night for bright noontime day. Only through the practiced steps of memory was he able to negotiate stepping up onto the wooden floor and out of the way of the quickly closed flaps without stumbling or running into the legionnaire guards posted just inside.
As the interior slowly contrasted out of the light, Vorenus saw with relief that he was not the last to arrive. Insteius and Caius Sosius were already there, standing over a table in the center of the room on which was spread a rolled-out map of Actium and the positions of the various forces on either side, but the third of their remaining Roman commanders, Delius, had not yet arrived. Neither had Antony nor Cleopatra graced them with their own presences.
Not comfortable enough to approach the map table, and knowing it would tell him little he did not already know about the enemy that had enveloped them, Vorenus made his way across the rug-covered planks to a triumphal-weapons rack beneath a decorative legionary standard. Insteius acknowledged him with a curt nod, but the two generals otherwise ignored him, whispering over the map.
Vorenus abruptly realized that at least some of the lamp oil burning in the room must be scented: the stench of decay was only just perceptible beyond a sweeter smell that reminded him of distant spring, of flowers and the memory of meadows.
The flaps moved again and a half-dozen lesser commanders, men he was certain would stay silent as flies on the wall through the meeting, entered and took up places on the opposite wall, trying to look self-assured. New to their positions of rank, Vorenus knew. Death and desertion tended to do that to an army.
Behind them, to his delight, came Titus Pullo, who was forced to duck low to step through into the light. The big man blinked once, twice, and then caught sight of Vorenus. He smiled—as only Pullo could in such conditions—and walked over to join his old friend.
“So,” Vorenus said, “you finally straightened out the watch, did you?”
“Had to knock a few heads together. But it’s settled now—for all the good it’ll do.”
Vorenus nodded. They both knew the watch was little more than a formality, really. Octavian was content to let starvation and disease take a toll far worse than his legionnaires could manage. The men knew it, too, and they had grown increasingly hostile to standing guard through the night. But duty was duty. Even when it made no sense.
“Vorenus?”
“Hmm?” Vorenus blinked up at his friend. “Sorry, I was thinking about something.”
“I asked if you’d seen Antony and Cleopatra,” Pullo repeated.
“I suspect they’re still in back,” Vorenus said, motioning to the cloth drapes that led out to the sleeping quarters the two shared. “Probably waiting to make an entrance.”
“Glad I’m not too late, then,” Pullo said. He was still smiling, but it was a grim expression, and there was a deep tiredness in his eyes.
They were simply too old for this, Vorenus knew. A couple of weathered men, far beyond their usefulness. It had been almost three decades since they’d sworn allegiance to the eagles of the legions. How was it that they were now fighting men who were children back when the two of them were hacking apart the barbarians alongside Julius Caesar? And how was it that they were fighting a son of Caesar? What had become of the world? It was like he’d fallen asleep one day and awoken in a different life.
The flaps at the entrance shifted again, and the last of the remaining generals, Delius, stepped through. He was wearing his full armor of breastplate and greaves, all neatly shined and gleaming in the lamplight. In the crook of his arm he held his formal bronze helm, its horsehair mane neatly combed for presentation. He took in the room slowly, barely betraying sensitivity to the stark light, before he strode up to the map table and set the fresh-polished helm upon it. Face hard, he leaned forward to stare at the maps before he whispered something to his two colleagues. Vorenus saw in their faces a hint of displeasure despite their efforts to remain calm.