The Blood of Gods A Novel of Rome - By Conn Iggulden Page 0,76
in Rome six months early. It was clear to both of them that the man should have been quietly executed on the Ides of March, but there was no point in regrets. If Caesar had lived, Hirtius and Pansa both knew they would have become puppet consuls for the Father of Rome, able to act only at his bidding. Instead, they were free and in command of legions. There were worse fates.
‘Do you really think he will fall in line?’ Pansa asked suddenly. Hirtius did not have to ask whom he meant. The subject had come up at some point every day out of Rome.
‘It is a perfect solution, Pansa, as I’ve said. Octavian is just a youth. He reached too far and had his fingers burned. All he wants now is to salvage a little dignity.’ He patted his saddlebag, where the Senate orders rested in their pouch. ‘Making him propraetor gives him recognition, though you will notice it makes him governor in name, but without a place to govern. What a gift, that is worth so much and yet costs us nothing!’ Hirtius smiled modestly, hoping his colleague would remember who had suggested it.
‘He is too young, Pansa, and much too inexperienced to rule Rome. The ridiculous fiasco at the forum showed that. I suspect he will fall on our necks with gratitude, but if he doesn’t, we have both the rank and the men to enforce the Senate will. His men are not fanatics, remember, for all their talk of a new Caesar. They did not offer to fight to the death when they thought Mark Antony was returning to Rome. Not them! Instead, they charged away in the opposite direction. Legionaries are practical men, Pansa – and so am I.’
Arretium had grown up on the Via Cassia, a town made prosperous by the ease with which trade goods could reach it and travel from it to other regions. Neither Hirtius nor Pansa knew the area well, but their extraordinarii riders kept a wide ring around them as they went north, reporting back in a chain so that they were informed of all that lay ahead. Before the sun reached the western hills on their flank, their riders came back accompanied by strangers, seeking out the consuls and reporting with all the formality they might require. Hirtius accepted the messages of welcome and safe passage as if they had been expected all along, though he could not resist a smug glance at his co-consul.
‘It is too early to stop for the night,’ Hirtius said in an aside to his colleague. ‘I would rather take the legions into Arretium and make sure the Senate orders have been properly … understood.’
Pansa nodded immediately, already cheerful at the thought of a return to civilisation. Hirtius seemed to thrive on sleeping out, but at sixty years of age, Pansa’s bones ached each morning.
The legions had not stopped for their consuls to receive messages. They marched on without expression as the orders came down the line. It mattered little to them whether they slept in tents by the road or in tents by a Roman town. At the end of the day, they were the same tents.
Manoeuvring such large numbers required a fair level of skill and both consuls were happy to leave the deployment to their subordinates. As they came within a mile of the walled town, a dozen extraordinarii and three of Octavian’s tribunes came out to help them organise the halt without adding to the problems of the legions already in the vicinity. The best places were all taken, of course, but Hirtius and Pansa cared nothing for that. They accepted the invitation to meet Caesar in a fine provincial home outside the walls. Both men rode in with their lictors and personal guards, so that they made an impressive group. They had been offered a truce to approach and Hirtius did not expect treachery, but he still had enough men to fight his way out if necessary. In any case, his new rank demanded such a following and he enjoyed the sight of stern lictors watching for the slightest insult to his person.
The estate was small compared with those around Rome, but Hirtius approved of the taste and wealth that had gone into its creation. The main house was reached through open gates and a wide courtyard, where servants scurried to take their horses. Hirtius looked to the pillared entrance and saw Octavian waiting there. He stood with