Cato 06 - The Eagles Prophecy Read Free Page B

last winter in Britain. The endless misery of the damp and chilly climate had worked its way into the very hearts of the legionaries and set them to melancholy thoughts of home. Now Macro was home, and the terrible frustration of eking out his life on dwindling savings was driving him mad.
    Raising a hand to his head, Macro scratched at his scalp, cursing the lice that seemed to breed in every corner of the crumbling tenement block.
    ‘Bloody lice are in on the act as well,’ he muttered. ‘Has everyone got it in for me these days?’
    There was some justice to his complaint. For the best part of two years he and Cato had fought their way through the savage tribes of Britain and had played their part in defeating Caratacus and his Celtic horde. And their reward for all the dangers they had faced? A damp room in a crumbling tenement block in the slum district of the Subura as they waited to be recalled to duty. Worse still, due to some bureaucratic nicety, they had not been paid since arriving in Rome and now Macro and Cato had all but run through the money they had brought back with them from Britain.
    A distant hubbub of voices and cries carried across from the forum as the city shuffled to life in the bleak glow of a winter dawn. Macro shivered, and pulled his thick army cloak about his broad shoulders. Grimacing at the rhythmic pounding in his skull, he eased himself to his feet and shuffled across the room to the shutters. He lifted the cord off the bent nail that secured the two wooden panels and then pushed the broken one out. More light spilled into the room as the worn hinges grated in protest and Macro narrowed his eyes against the sudden glare. But only for a moment. Once again the now-too-familiar vista of Rome opened up before him and he could not help being awed by the spectacle of the world’s greatest city. Built on to the unfashionable side of the Esquiline hill, the topmost rooms of the tenement block looked out over the insanely crowded squalor of the Subura, towards the towering temples and palaces that surrounded the Forum, and beyond to the warehouses that were packed along the banks of the Tiber.
    He had been told that nearly a million people were crowded within the walls of Rome. From where Macro stood that was all too easy to believe. A geometric chaos of rooftiles dropped down the slope in front of him, and the narrow alleyways that ran between them could only be divined where the grimy brickwork of the upper levels of the apartments were visible. A shroud of woodsmoke hung over the city and its acrid stench even overwhelmed the sharp tang from the tannery at the end of the street. Even now, after more than three months in the city, Macro had not grown used to the raw stench of the place. Nor the filth that lay in the streets: a dark mixture of shit and rotting scraps of food that not even the meanest beggar would pick through. And everywhere the dense press of bodies that flowed through the streets: slaves, traders, merchants and artisans. Drawn from across the Empire, they still bore the trappings of their civilisations in an exotic medley of colours and styles. Around them swirled the listless mass of freeborn citizens looking for some form of entertainment to keep them amused when they were not queuing for the grain dole. Here and there the litters of the rich were carried above and apart from the rest of Rome, their owners clutching pomades to their noses to catch a more fragrant breath in the ripe atmosphere that embraced the city.
    That was the reality of life in Rome and it overwhelmed Macro. He wondered at the mass of humanity that could tolerate such an affront to the senses and not yearn for the freedom and freshness of a life far removed from the city. He felt sure that Rome would soon drive him mad.
    Macro leaned his elbows on the worn sill and peered down into the shadowy street that ran along the side of the tenement block. His eyes slid down the grimy brickwork of the wall