The Emperor Series Books 1-4

Marcus slipped in and out of waking, coming back with a sudden start and realising he had somehow drifted away from the cold and the darkness. He wondered then if he would die in the river.

In one of those dreaming dozes, he felt warmth and heard the welcoming crackle of a good log fire. An old man prodded the burning wood with his toe, smiling at the sparks. He turned and seemed to notice the boy watching him, white and lost.

‘Come closer to the warm, boy, I'll not hurt ye.’

The old man's face carried the wrinkles and dirt of decades of labour and worry. It was scarred and seamed like a stitched purse. The hands were covered in rope veins that shifted under the skin as the swollen knuckles moved. He was dressed like a travelling man, with patched clothes and a dark-red cloth wrapping his throat.

‘What do we have here? A mudfish! Rare for these parts, but good eating on one, they say. You could cut a leg off and feed us both. I'd stop the bleeding, boy, I'm not without tricks.’

Huge eyebrows bristled and raised in interest at the thought. The eyes glittered and the mouth opened to reveal soft gums, wet and puckered. The man patted his pockets and the shadows copied his movements, flapping on dark-yellow walls that were lit only by the flames.

‘Hold still, boy, I have a knife with a saw edge for you …’ A hand like rough stone was pressed over his whole face, suddenly larger than a hand had any right to be.

The old man's breath was warm on his ear, smelling foully of rotting teeth.

He awoke choking and heaving dryly. His stomach was empty and the moon had risen. Gaius was beside him still, his face barely above the black glass water, head nodding in and out of the darkness.

It was enough. If the choice was to fail or to die, then he would fail and not mind the consequences. Tactically, that was the better choice. Sometimes, it is better to retreat and marshal your forces. That was what the old man wanted them to know. He wanted them to give up and was probably waiting somewhere nearby, waiting for them to learn this most important of lessons.

Marcus didn't remember the dream, except for the fear of being smothered, which he still felt. His body seemed to have lost its familiar shape and just sat, heavy and waterlogged beneath the surface. He had become some sort of soft-skinned, bottom-dwelling fish. He concentrated and his mouth hung slackly, dribbling back water as cold as himself. He swayed forward and brought up his arm to hold a root. It was the first time a limb had cleared the water in eleven hours. He felt the cold of death on him and had no regrets. True, Gaius was still there, but they would have different strengths. Marcus would not die to please some poxed-up old gladiator.

He slithered out, an inch at a time, mud plastering his face and chest as he dragged himself to the bank. His bloated stomach did seem buoyant in the water, as if filled from within. The sensation as his full weight finally came to bear on the hard ground was one of ecstasy. He lay and began to shudder in spasmodic fits of retching. Yellow bile trickled weakly out of his lips and mixed with the black mud. The night was quiet and he felt as if he'd just crawled out of the grave.

Dawn found him still there and a shadow blocking the pale sun. Renius stood there and frowned, not at Marcus, but at the tiny pale figure of the boy still in the water, eyes closed and lips blue. As Marcus watched him, he saw a sudden spasm of worry cross the iron face.

‘Boy!’ snapped the voice they had already come to loathe. ‘Gaius!’

The figure in the water lolled in the moving current, but there was no response. A muscle in Renius' jaw clenched and the old soldier stepped up to his thighs into the pool, reaching down and scooping up the ten-year-old like a puppy over his shoulder. The eyes opened with the sudden movement, but there was no focus. Marcus rose as the old man strode away with his burden, obviously heading back to the house. He tottered after, muscles protesting.

Behind them, Tubruk stood in the shadows of the opposite bank, still hidden from sight by the foliage as he had been all night. His eyes were narrowed and as cold as the river.

Renius seemed to be fuelled by a constant anger. After months of training, the boys had not seen him smile except in mockery. On bad days, he rubbed his neck as he snapped at them and gave the impression that his temper was cracking every second. He was worst in the midday sun, when his skin would mottle with irritation at the slightest mistake.

‘Hold the stone straight in front!’ he barked at Marcus and Gaius as they sweated in the heat. The task that afternoon was to stand with arms outstretched in front, with a rock the size of a fist held in their hands. It had been easy at first.

Gaius' shoulders were aching and his arms felt loose. He tried to tense the muscles, but they seemed out of his control. Perspiring, he watched the stone drop by a hand's width and felt a stripe of pain over his stomach as Renius struck with a short whip. His arms trembled and muscles shuddered under the pain. He concentrated on the rock and bit his lip.

‘You will not let it fall. You will welcome the pain. You will not let it fall.’

Renius' voice was a harsh chant as he paced around the boys. This was the fourth time they had raised the stones and each time was harder. He barely allowed them a minute to rest their aching arms before the order to raise came again.

‘Cease,’ Renius said, watching to see they controlled the descent, his whip held ready. Marcus was breathing heavily and Renius curled his lip.

‘There will come a time when you think you can't stand the pain any more and men's lives will depend on it. You could be holding a rope others are climbing, or walking forty miles in full kit to rescue comrades. Are you listening?’

The boys nodded, trying not to pant with exhaustion, just pleased he was talking instead of ordering the stones up again.

'I have seen men walk themselves to death, falling onto the road with their legs still twitching and trying to lift them. They were buried with honour.

‘I have seen men of my legion keep rank and move in formation, holding their guts in with one hand. They were buried with honour.’ He paused to consider his words, rubbing the back of his neck as though he had been stung.

'There will be times when you want to simply sit down, when you want to give up. When your body tells you it is done and your spirit is weak.

'These are false. Savages and the beasts of the field break, but we go on.

‘Do you think you are finished now? Are your arms hurting you? I tell you that you will raise that rock another dozen times this hour and you will hold it. And another dozen if you let one fall below a hand's width.’

A slave girl was washing dust from a wall at the side of the courtyard. She never looked at the boys, though occasionally she jumped slightly as the old gladiator barked a command. Gaius saw she looked exhausted herself, but he had noticed she was attractive, with long dark hair and a loose slave shift. Her face was delicate, with a pair of dark eyes and a full mouth pressed into a line by the concentration of her work. He thought her name was Alexandria.

As Renius spoke, she bent low to dip the cloth in the bucket and paused to wash the dirt from the material. Her shift gaped as she pressed the cloth into the water and Gaius could see the smooth skin of her neck running down to the soft curves of her breasts. He thought he could see right down to the skin of her stomach and imagined her nipples gently grazing against the rough cloth as she moved.

In that moment, Renius was forgotten, despite the pain in his arms.

The old man stopped speaking and turned on his heel to see what was distracting the boys from their lesson. He growled as he saw the slave and crossed to her with three quick strides, taking her arm in a cruel grip that made her cry out. His voice was a bellow.

‘I am teaching these children a lesson that will save their lives and you are flashing your paps at them like a cheap whore!’

The girl cowered from his anger, pulling as far as she could reach from the held wrist.

‘I …’ she stammered, seeming dazed, but Renius swore and took her by the hair. She winced in pain and he swung her to face the boys.

‘I don't care if there are a thousand of these behind my back. I am teaching you to concentrate!’

In one brutal move, he flicked her legs away with a sweep of his foot and she fell. Still holding her hair, Renius raised his whip in his other hand and brought it down sharply, in sequence with his words.

‘You will not distract these boys while I teach.’

The girl was crying as Renius let her go. She crawled a couple of paces, then came up to a crouch and ran from the yard, sobbing.

Marcus and Gaius looked dumbfounded at Renius as he turned back to them. His expression was murderous.

‘Close your mouths, boys. This was never a game. I will make you good enough and hard enough to serve the Republic after I am gone. I will not allow weakness of any kind. Now raise the stones and hold them until I say to cease.’

Once again, the boys raised their arms, not even daring to exchange glances.

That evening, when the estate was quiet and Renius had departed for the city, Gaius delayed his usual exhausted collapse into sleep to visit the slave quarters. He felt guilty being there and kept an eye out for Tubruk's shadow, though he couldn't quite have explained why.

The household slaves slept under the same roof as the family, in a wing of simple rooms. It was not a world he knew and he felt nervous as he walked along the darkening corridors, wondering whether he should knock at doors, or call her name, if it really was Alexandria.

He found her sitting on a low ledge outside an open door. She seemed lost in thought and he cleared his throat gently as he recognised her. She scrambled to her feet in fright and then held herself still, looking at the floor. She had cleaned the dust of the day from her skin and it was smooth and pale in the evening light. Her hair was tied back with a scrap of cloth and her eyes were wide with darkness.

‘Is your name Alexandria?’ he said quietly.

She nodded.

‘I came to say sorry for today. I was watching you at your chores and Renius thought you were distracting us.’

She stood perfectly still in front of him and kept her gaze on the floor at his feet. The silence stretched for a moment and he blushed, unsure how to continue.