Rogue Emperor (The Chronoplane Wars Book 3) Read online

  Pierce was not concerned about giving up his Mallory when the gathering began. He had no intention of killing Martel; unless the Agency was on the brink of stepping in, an assassination would be pointless and probably suicidal. One of the Elders or Crucifers would take over, and would have time to reorganize. And even if he could wipe out all the Elders as well as Martel, someone like the Ptaetorian general Drusus might seize power. That would only complicate the Agency’s efforts to reestablish itself.

  The walkie-talkie on Maria’s hip crackled into life. She lifted it to her lips while Pierce looked appropriately startled.

  “Sister Maria? Brother Joe. Uh, I’m supposed to get the combat show organized, but I got held up here in the palace. Brother David said maybe you could go over to the gladiators’ school and make sure everything’s set.”

  Maria scanned the barbed wire. “Sister Maria here. Okay, Brother Joe. You owe me one.”

  “Thanks. Blessings.”

  “Come along, Alaricus; we have to talk to the lanista at the gladiators’ school.”

  The school was just across the plaza from the Amphitheater, a walled compound of low brick buildings and a miniature stadium. The porters at the gate were squat, powerful men — probably ex-gladiators who had earned their freedom and stayed on in the management end of the business. They stared up at Maria with a mixture of astonishment and lechery on their battered faces.

  “Is Lucius Scaurus here?” she demanded.

  “He is,” said one of the porters.

  “I am on the emperor’s business. Take us to him.”

  They pulled the gate open; Maria strode in with Pierce behind her. He saw a dusty practice ground surrounded by shedlike buildings, one of them obviously a gladiators’ barracks. The porter led them through the practice ground and past a long, low shed divided into barred cages. Men, filthy and beaten, crouched there under a roof too low to allow them to stand, noxii, common criminals who had been condemned to death in the arena. Unarmed, they would be slaughtered by gladiators as a lunchtime amusement before the afternoon’s serious fighting began.

  Without even a glance at the captives, the porter escorted Pierce and Maria to the little stadium, whose wooden seats rose ten meters. A passage under the stands brought them into the first row of seats, three meters above the arena. In the walkway between the stands and the arena itself, over twenty men and a few women stood watching a practice combat between two Samnites — gladiators with the weapons and armor of Rome’s ancient enemies.

  In the stands sat perhaps fifty men, some of them well-dressed and affluent; the rest were obviously slave attendants. They watched the practice with interest and knowledgeability, cheering at a good blow or parry and jeering at slowness or caution. Their shouts died away as they noticed Maria. The watching gladiators looked up, and then even the combatants. Silence fell.

  A breeze sprang up, bringing with it a smell of putrefaction. Pierce detected it first, but a moment later Maria’s face tightened with disgust.

  “I wish to speak with Lucius Scaurus,” she called out.

  A gaunt, hard-faced man wearing a toga over a red tunic stood up from a seat in the first row. “I am he. May I have the honor of knowing who addresses me?”

  “I am the Domina Maria, representing the emperor Martellus.”

  Scaurus’s hard face creased in an obsequious smirk as he hurried over. Slaves scuttled after him, bearing parasols and fans.

  “Please, my lady, be so good as to seat yourself.” His attendants began to fan Maria, stirring the humid, stinking air. “May I offer you the poor hospitality of my school — a cup of wine, a morsel of bread or fruit?”

  “Benigne dicis; no, thank you. I need only to make sure that everything is ready for this afternoon’s gathering in the Amphitheater.”

  “You see our men practicing now, my lady.” He gestured expansively toward the men in the arena. “Get on with it, you agrestii! Louts!” The combatants resumed, but no one paid much attention to anything but the tall blond Amazon. “These are not our best, mere paegniarii. They fight with wooden swords and whips, like little boys. Surely you will want some proper fighters?”

  “No. The emperor was very clear on that. He wants no bloodshed in this gathering.”

  Scaurus shrugged and threw his hands in the air. “I obey, of course. But please do not forget that the gladiators of my familia are the most renowned in the empire. That fellow there, Astavius” — he pointed to a squat man in the helmet of a myrmillo — “was in the arena at the very moment the thunderbolt slew the evil Domitian, fighting at the specific command of the emperor.”

  Pierce recognized him: The man had been fighting a retiarius. Then, just beyond the man, he saw a young woman standing by the arena fence. Her dark hair was pulled back tightly into a long ponytail; she wore a leather breastplate over a white tunic. She was the gladiatrix Pierce had seen weeping in the spoliarium, the morgue under the stands of the Amphitheater. In the light of day she was even lovelier than she had been by lamplight.

  Evidently bored by the rehearsal of the paegniarii, the woman looked up at the stands; her eyes met Pierce’s, and she recognized him at once. He looked back impassively.

  “Indeed,” Maria said uninterestedly. “Scaurus, what is that smell?”

  “Smell, my lady? Oh — the carnarium?” He grinned, showing dead front teeth. “That’s the pit where the dead beasts go after every venatio in the arena. And the slain noxii, if their wretched families don’t claim the bodies. The pit’s just beyond the walls.” He pointed toward the east.

  “Dear Lord,” Maria muttered in English. Then, in Latin: “A new era has dawned in Rome. Do not expect to send more men to their deaths in the arena.”

  The lanista looked astounded. “Surely I misunderstand my lady. The people expect it. The people demand it.”

  “The emperor Martellus demands otherwise.” Maria looked disapprovingly at Scaurus. “In any case, you need not concern yourself with that for a time. Only bring in your fighters this afternoon, and make sure they give a good performance.”

  “Of course, my lady.” Scaurus and Pierce sprang to their feet as Maria rose and headed for the exit. Pierce felt the eyes of the gladiatrix on him as he left.

  “Disgusting,” Maria said as they passed out through the gate. “This is almost a perversion of the faith. We fight for the glory of God and the spread of the gospel. If we die, we redeem our sins; if we kill, we serve God’s will. But these — these creatures fight and die for nothing. For an afternoon’s amusement, and to fill a pit with rotting flesh.”

  “My lady, you speak the truth. The emperor will make the world a better place by forbidding these shows.”

  He wondered what would happen to the noxii. Perhaps, if he was not to be paid for killing them, Scaurus would simply have them clubbed and pitched into the carnarium.

  The lanista had been right, though. Deprived of their games and shows, the people of Rome might well become combatants themselves.

  Eighteen

  The procession from the palace began with the lictors, a dozen officials bearing the fasces — bundles of bound rods that symbolized the Roman state. Seeing this familiar vanguard, the crowds flanking the Amphitheater plaza set up a cheer that soon died away. Next should have come a contingent of boys, sons of the city’s greatest families; instead, two cohorts of Praetorians marched stolidly into the plaza.

  Pierce and Maria watched from an archway on the second story of the Amphitheater, where they could survey almost the whole length of the procession as it came down the Palatine Hill. Maria carried an AR-20 sniper’s rifle; through her ringmike she kept up a steady exchange of comments with her security team, scattered on rooftops and balconies along the procession route and around the plaza. Pierce had little to do except to watch the marchers and the spectators.

  Obviously the crowd was surprised and disappointed by the appearance of the Praetorians. The appearance of a hundred Crucifers, all carrying Uzis and wearing uptime camouflage
uniforms, stirred some interest; so did the ordinary Militants who followed, dressed in red choir robes and singing Martel’s hymns.

  When it became clear, however, that the procession had no gladiators, animals, or dancers, the crowd began to shift uneasily. Pierce felt a sting of alertness: Riot was in the air.

  At this point the procession should have displayed images of the gods, nymphs, muses, and graces; instead came a small band playing for the choir, followed by more Crucifers escorting the Elders, and a lone man carrying a white flag with a yellow cross.

  “Here he comes,” Maria murmured into her ringmike. “All stations, full alert.”

  Martel appeared, seated on a litter carried by ten Crucifers and escorted by Praetorians. He was dressed in a white toga over a purple tunic, and his golden hair gleamed in the late-afternoon sun. The Praetorians had organized claques in the crowd, and Martel’s arrival sparked new cheers and a flutter of hundreds of white handkerchiefs.

  The procession circled the Amphitheater in a brassy uproar of cheers, screams, and hymns. Maria and Pierce kept pace, walking almost half a kilometer along the circumference of the Amphitheater so they could keep the emperor in sight. As Martel passed, many in the crowd surged across the plaza to the nearest entrance and swarmed up into the seats. Maria led Pierce up the tunnel to the emperor’s gate; it was walled in marble, with a ceiling painted in purple and gold. They stationed themselves at the side of the gate, about a third of the way up the north side, where they commanded a view of most of the spectators.

  “Alaricus, remember that you will be in the presence of the emperor. I must ask you to give me your tormentum.”

  Good; she hadn’t forgotten. He handed the Mallory over without a word. Pierce had known security chiefs with far more experience who had slipped up on just such details.

  Martel, the Praetorians, and the Militants came in through the emperor’s gate as the band played a fanfare; his descent down the steps to the pulvinar caused more cheers and fluttered handkerchiefs. A few spectators pushed up against the barbed wire and recoiled; their neighbors laughed.

  “Everything’s going fine,” Maria said to her security team. “Keep your eyes open, people.”

  Pierce thought it was going rather poorly. The Amphitheater was crowded, true, but the mood of the crowd seemed a mixture of curiosity, hostility, and bafflement. After the procession, they did not know what to expect; many had doubtless been deeply offended by the neglect of the gods and the absence of gladiators.

  The overcast had deepened during the day, and the Amphitheater lay in a shadowless, chilly late-afternoon twilight. The arena was bare, devoid of the usual scenery used in the combats. Across the smooth-raked sand a troupe of silver-armored paegniarii marched to salute Martel. He returned the salute with a smile and they fell upon one another, slashing with whips or stabbing with wooden swords. With every blow they cursed and shrieked; Pierce recalled old samurai movies.

  The crowd watched with a kind of sour good humor, calling out sarcastically: “Look out, Cupid, my grandmother’s fighting you next.” “Hit him harder, he’s still asleep!” But before the troupe had finished and marched out, fires were burning here and there in the stands — a sign of boredom here, Pierce decided, as at uptime Mexican bullfights.

  The curtain-raiser was over. Martel stepped to the edge of the pulvinar; as he did so, Willard — a few steps behind him — spoke into a ringmike to technicians below the stands.

  Martel raised his hands above his head, and his voice, enormously amplified, boomed out across the arena and up into the highest seats.

  “People of Rome.”

  His answer was a sudden intake of breath, a gasp from fifty thousand people.

  “People of Rome,” Martel repeated. “I greet you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I am Martellus, sent by God to bring Rome a new age of blessedness and joy.

  “Many of you already know that in the reign of Tiberius a man was crucified in Judea: Jesus Christus. The Jews who killed Him mocked Him as King of the Jews, but He was far more than that; He was Lord of the world. He died on the cross, was buried, and three days later He rose from the dead to speak with men before He ascended into Heaven.”

  Watching the crowd just beyond the barbed wire, Pierce thought the sound system was impressing the audience more than Martel’s words. The sermon went on, a potted resume of Martel’s version of Christianity, until he got to the cover story.

  “We are the Church Militant. In a faraway land we were told by God to make our way to Rome, and to make the empire blessed. First we came secretly, and revealed ourselves only to a few. They saw the truth we brought, and begged us to save all Rome from the pit of damnation.”

  Suddenly the floor of the arena boiled with lurid orange flames that seemed to climb out of an abyss. The sound system exploded with a clap of thunder. The crowd screamed, almost as loudly as when Domitian and his entourage had been murdered.

  “There is Hell,” Martel roared, and the last word echoed over and over. “Look upon it, O Romans, and think that you may find yourselves burning in it at the very moment of your death. There will all sinners be cast by a wrathful God, while the saved will sit in Heaven as you sit here, watching the eternal sufferings of the damned.”

  Pierce was impressed. The holoprojection was extremely good, and the computer graphics, based on Hieronymus Bosch’s vision of hell, were suitably monstrous — especially when blown up to a gigantic scale to make them easily visible to the upper seats. The sound system now drowned out the crowd with howls and maniacal laughter and screaming feedback.

  Again Martel raised his hands, and the vision vanished instantly. The loudspeakers carried instead the choir singing “I Bring Not Peace But a Sword,” Martel’s most rousing hymn. The crashing chords, the military beat, and the subsonic thump in the synthesizers all combined to produce a different kind of emotional stress from that of the vision of hell. As the hymn neared its end, another holographic image began to form in the air over the Amphitheater. It loomed almost as high as the Colossus’s fifty meters.

  The image was a cross, on which Christ was nailed. He hung at an angle, as if about to fall upon the spectators, and blood — luridly red — dripped liquidly from his hands and feet and side, falling and then disappearing.

  “Now, Romans, look upon the Son of God, who died to save us all from that fiery pit,” Martel roared. Then, modulating his voice to an echoing whisper: “Look upon the blood that cleanses all sin. Only wash yourself in that blood and accept Him as your personal savior, and you shall walk hand in hand with Him through the golden streets of Heaven, for all eternity.”

  The image faded away. By now darkness was falling fast, and some people had run screaming for the exits. Praetorians turned them back with clubs and spear butts.

  “In the midst of the darkness of this world,” said Martel gently, “He brings us … lux.” Floodlights mounted at the very top of the seats came on, bringing daylight to the whole Amphitheater. The spectators sighed in wonder, and Pierce heard one cry out, “Brighter than Domitian’s chandelier!” The lights died away again, except for three focused on Martel.

  “In that light, Christ sees all our sins and all our virtues. We cannot hide; we cannot lie. We have only to say, ‘Lord, I accept you as my personal savior. Lead me into your paths, and spare me from the fires of damnation.’ And we shall be saved.”

  He fell silent, and the fifty thousand, now sitting in darkness, murmured anxiously.

  “Yes,” Martel went on, “we shall be saved even if we are put to the sword, even if we are condemned to be devoured by the beasts in the arena. And I have come to you, O Romans, to bring you good news. Jesus loves you, and wishes you all to dwell in Heaven with Him for eternity. That is why He has sent us here, to bring you salvation and peace.

  “I acknowledge Jesus as Lord of the world, O Romans, and He has sent me here to serve as His vicar. I am to serve Him as emperor, so that all may come to salvation. Not only
Romans — but Rome itself. For I was given a vision, O Romans.”

  A third holoprojection blazed above the arena, almost too bright to look upon: a burning cross, thirty meters high.

  “And Jesus said to me, ‘In this sign you shall conquer.’ O Romans, in this sign we shall conquer all the world, from the frozen sea of the north to the frozen sea of the south, from the western islands to the silk land. That is the task that Jesus has given me, and that I took up gladly. I am emperor of Rome, but I serve a greater Lord, and I bid you to follow me in that service.”

  The Praetorians and the claques set up a cheer, and the rest of the crowd raggedly echoed. To Pierce they seemed bemused, almost dazed by Martel’s show. People milled about, as if sitting still were now impossible, yet no one could move far. The choir and band struck up another hymn, with the nervous chatter of fifty thousand people as a kind of basso continuo.

  Off to the eastern side of the stands, just beyond the barbed wire, Pierce saw more-purposeful movement: a handful of cloaked men working their way through the crowd toward the wire.

  “My lady.” He pointed.

  “Sector one east,” she murmured in English into her ringmike. “Do you see four or five men approaching the wire at about the thirtieth row? Keep an eye on them.”

  She touched Pierce’s arm, a little longer than she needed to, and said, “Come.”

  They moved along a walkway toward the wire. The cloaked men were scattered and moving slowly, but they seemed to be converging on a point between the twentieth and thirtieth rows.

  The hymn was over, and Martel resumed his place.

  “People of Rome,” his voice boomed out, “Roman law is the splendor of the world, and we are respecters of the law. God has sent me to rule as emperor, and your own great men have acknowledged me. The general of the Praetorian Guard, and all his noble warriors, support me.”

  Gaius Vitillus Drusus, gleaming in gilt armor, stepped forward into the spotlights and saluted Martel.