The Emperor Series Books 1-4. Conn Iggulden
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have my guards take you home.’
Cornelia pressed a hand on her father's arm. ‘No. I am not yours any more. Julius is my husband and he will expect me to be here.’
Then the tears could no longer be held back and she began to sob. Cinna pulled her to him and embraced her tightly.
* * *
Sulla frowned as his men raced to secure the main streets, which would give them access to the great forum and the heart of the city. After the first bloody scramble, the battle for Rome had gone well for him, with area after area taken with quick, brutal skirmishes and then held against an enemy in disarray. Before the sun had risen fully, most of the lower east quarter of Rome was under his control, creating a large area in which they could rest and regroup. Then tactical problems had arisen. With his controlled areas expanding in a line, he had fewer and fewer men to hold the border and knew he was always in danger from any sort of attack that massed men against a section where his were spread thinly.
Sulla's advance slowed and orders flowed ever more swiftly from him, moving units around, or making them hold. He knew he had to have a secure base before he asked for any kind of surrender. After Marius' last words to them, Sulla accepted that there was a chance his soldiers would fight to the last man – their loyalty was legendary even in a system where such loyalty was fostered and nurtured. He had to make them lose hope and a slowing advance would not do that.
Now he was standing in an open square at the top of the Caelius hill. All the massed streets behind him back to the Caelimontana gate were his. The fires had been put out and his legion were entrenched from there all the way to Porta Raudusculana at the southern tip of the city walls.
In the small square were nearly a hundred of his men, split into groups of four. Each man had volunteered and he was touched by it. Was this what Marius felt when his men offered their lives for him?
‘You have your orders. Keep moving and cause havoc. If you are outnumbered, get away until you can attack again. You are my luck and the luck of the legion. Gods speed you.’
As one, they saluted him and he returned it, his arm stiff. He expected most to be dead within the hour. If it had been night, they would have been more useful, but in the bright daylight they were little better than a distraction. He watched the last group of four squeeze through the barricade and hare off along a side street.
‘Have Marius’ body wrapped and placed in cool shadow,' Sulla said to a nearby soldier. ‘I cannot say when I will have the leisure to organise a proper funeral for him.’
A sudden flight of arrows was launched from two or three streets away. Sulla watched the arc with interest, noting the most likely site for the archers and hoping a few of his four-man squads were in the area. The black shafts passed overhead and then all around them, shattering on the stone of the courtyard Sulla had adopted as a temporary command post. One of his messengers dropped with a barbed arrow through his chest and another screamed, though he seemed not to have been touched. Sulla frowned.
‘Guard. Take that messenger somewhere close and flog him. Romans don't scream or faint at the sight of blood. Make sure I can see a little of his on his back when you return.’
The guard nodded and the messenger was borne away in silence, terrified lest his punishment be increased.
A centurion ran up and saluted.
‘General. This area is secure. Shall I sound the slow advance?’
Sulla stared at him.
‘I chafe at the pace we are setting. Sound the charge for this section. Let the others catch us up as they may.’
‘We will be exposed, sir, to flanking attacks,’ the man stammered.
‘Question an order of mine again in war and I will have you hanged like a common criminal.’
The man paled and spun to give the order.
Sulla ground his teeth in irritation. Oh, for an enemy who would meet him on an open field. This city fighting was unseen and violent. Men ripping each other with blades out of sight in distant alleyways. Where were the glorious charges? The singing battle weapons? But he would be patient and he would eventually grind them down to despair. He heard the charge horn sound and saw his men lift their barricades and prepare to carry them forward. He felt his blood quicken with excitement. Let them try to flank him, with so many of his squads mingling out there to attack from behind.
He smelled fresh smoke on the air and could see flames lick from high windows in the streets just ahead. Screams sounded above the eternal clash of arms and desperate figures climbed out onto stone ledges, thirty, forty feet above the sprawling mêlée below. They would die on the great stones of the roadways. Sulla saw one woman lose her grip and fall headfirst onto the heavy kerb. It broke her into a twisted doll. Smoke swirled in his nostrils. One more street and then another.
His men were moving quickly.
‘Forward!’ he urged, feeling his heart beat faster.
Orso Ferito spread a map of Rome on a heavy wooden table and looked around at the faces of the centurions of the First-Born.
‘The line I have marked is how much territory Sulla has under his control. He fights on an expanding line and is vulnerable to a spear-point attack at almost any part of it. I suggest we attack here and here at the same time.’ He indicated the two points on the map, looking round at the other men in the room. Like Orso, they were tired and dirty. Few had slept more than an hour or two at a time in the previous three-day battle and, like the men, they were close to complete exhaustion.
Orso himself had been in command of five centuries when he had witnessed Marius' murder at the hands of Sulla. He had heard his general's last shout and he still burned with rage when he thought of smug Sulla shoving a blade into a man Orso loved more dearly than his own father.
The following day had been chaos, with hundreds dying on both sides. Orso had kept control over his own men, launching short and bloody attacks and then withdrawing before reserves could be brought up. Like many of Marius' men, he was not high-born and had grown up on the streets of Rome. He understood how to fight in the roads and alleys he had scrambled along as a boy, and before dawn on the second day he had emerged as the unofficial leader of the First-Born.
His influence was felt immediately as he began to coordinate the attacks and defences. Some streets Orso would let go as strategically unimportant. He ordered the occupants out of houses, set the fires and had his men withdraw under arrow cover. Other streets they fought for again and again, concentrating their available forces on preventing Sulla from breaking through. Many had been lost, but the headlong rush into the city had been slowed and stopped in many areas. It would not be over quickly now and Sulla had a fight on his hands.
Whatever Orso's mother had called him, he had always been Orso, the bear, to his men. His squat body and most of his face was covered in black, wiry hair, right up onto his cheeks. His slab-muscled shoulders were matted with dried blood and, like the others in the room who had been forced to give up their Roman taste for cleanliness, he stank of smoke and old sweat.
The meeting room had been chosen at random, a kitchen in someone's town house. The group of centurions had walked in off the street and spread the map out. The owner was upstairs somewhere. Orso sighed as he looked at the map. Breakthroughs were possible, but they would need the luck of the gods to beat Sulla. He looked around at the faces at the table again and was hard put not to wince at the hope he saw reflected there. He was no Marius, he knew that. If the general had remained alive to be in this room, they would have had a fighting chance. As it was …
‘They have no more than twenty to fifty men at any given point on the line. If we break through quickly, with two centuries at each position, we should be able to cut them to pieces before reinforcements arrive.’
‘What then? Go for Sulla?’ one of the centurions asked. Marius would have known his name, Orso acknowledged to himself.
‘We can't be sure where that snake has positioned himself. He is quite capable of setting up a command tent as