Laughing Wolf Read Free Page A

living-room window. It afforded him a view of the city’s downtown region, with its mile-high skyscrapers whose totalium finish reflected the afternoon light. Strange to say, he was reminded of the ruins in the Roman Forum. Decrepit piles of brick and marble, the temples, basilicas, and pockmarked arches had at one time convinced each ancient Roman that his empire and wealth would endure forever. And now? The city’s aqueducts, roads, religion, buildings, and poems were long forgotten.
    â€œYou are frowning. If the sun is bothering you, I can tint the window.”
    â€œThat’s okay, Mentor. I’m enjoying the view.”
    â€œIt is very fine.”
    â€œPopulations think their ways will last forever. But I bet these buildings will vanish one day, like the Parthenon, the pyramids, or the Coliseum.”
    â€œA totalium structure should last eight hundred and sixty-two years on average.”
    â€œThat’s not what I mean. I’m saying we don’t care about the people before us. A hundred years from now, who’ll remember we existed?”
    â€œForgive me, Felix. I have not been programmed to address such feelings.”
    â€œNever mind. It’s my mother’s message. They always turn me inside out.”
    â€œYou should sit outside until your father arrives. The tranquility will you do good.”
    â€œThat’s a fine idea, Mentor. I’ll follow your suggestion.”
    Retrieving the Life of Crassus , Felix approached a door, which Mentor swiftly opened. Outside was a spiral staircase that led into a well-trimmed garden. As he stared into the greenery below, Felix was thinking that he’d lied to Mentor. His mother’s call didn’t bother him so much as the collapse of those two people that day. His instincts told him something odd was going on.
    Still, he had his lesson to think of. Descending the stairs, he put his worries aside and pretended he was entering the distant past.

    Crassus was standing in the thick of his army, forty thousand men, all told. They were in Assyria, in an empty plain, with the nearest source of water some ten miles distant. A small Parthian army crowned the hills before him. An hour ago their ranks had been thicker and their archers had fired constant volleys of arrows, pinning every Roman down and preventing battle at close quarters. Finally his son had led a cavalry charge and, in true Roman fashion, beaten the enemy back. Proud of his son’s manliness, Crassus was awaiting his return.
    â€œWe should leave,” his legate Cassius advised. “Before the enemy regroups.”
    â€œI told you already,” Crassus growled, “when Publius returns, we’ll proceed to Carrhae.”
    â€œWhere is he? He should have been back. If we don’t leave soon …”
    â€œWe stay until he’s here!” Crassus thundered. “If not for his charge, we’d be riddled with arrows and …”
    A reverberation of drums interrupted — the Parthian way of sounding an attack. On the hill before them a blinding flash shone forth and a cloud of dust filled most of the sky: waves of Parthians marched into sight, archers in front, cataphracts behind, their heavy armour impervious to spear and gladius.
    â€œWe should have left,” Cassius muttered.
    â€œWhere’s my son?” Crassus clamoured. “And where are my horsemen?”
    As if in answer, the cataphracts raised their pikes on high. On each was fixed the head of a Roman. And there, on the tallest pike … Crassus would have groaned had his thirst allowed: staring back at him, his eyes fearfully wide in death, was the severed head of his beloved boy.
    As Crassus hid his face, the Parthians closed in for the kill …

    â€œFelix!”
    Seated beneath an apple tree, Felix raised his eyes from the Life of Crassus and watched his father slowly draw near. Dressed in a black Zacron suit — his taste in clothes was very