Sword of Rome Read Free Page B

He walked to the pebble shore and looked out across the glittering waters, east, towards home.
    ‘You heard what the Batavian said. Every pass to Italia is guarded. By now he will have reported back to his headquarters and the place will be swarming with patrols, every one of them looking for a party of twenty-five men, led by a well-dressed aristocrat on a fine horse. You cannot change what you are and I cannot hide twenty-five men. We must go back. It is for …’ Valerius knew it wasn’t worth appealing to the man’s instinct for self-preservation, which lagged many leagues behind his political aspirations, ‘the good of the Empire. If you die, who will Galba be able to rely on? Titus Vinius, whose only loyalty is to himself? Cornelius Laco, a drunkard too lazy even to harbour ambition?’
    The other man frowned. It was the same question Otho had been asking himself since Galba had tasked him with this mission. And the closer he came to the sword points of the enemy, the more he doubted his patron’s motives. A few years earlier Marcus Salvius Otho had been as close to Nero as anyone in the young Emperor’s increasingly debauched court: close enough to offer him the sexual favours of his wife, Poppaea. But Poppaea had captivated the Emperor and Otho had been ordered to divorce her. He had become an embarrassment and a liability. It said much for his powers of persuasion that he had been sent into virtual exile as governor of far-away Lusitania, Rome’s most westerly province and a rural backwater, rather than quietly executed. Galba’s bid for power had given Marcus Salvius Otho an opportunity to return to Rome with honour and the promise of advancement, but the opportunity came at a price and with a high risk. To claim it Otho would have to march into the very heart of Nero’s Rome and just one slip would bring torture and death. But the governor of Lusitania did not lack courage. He shook his head. ‘My mission is too important.’
    Valerius took a deep breath. ‘There is another possibility. Two men might get through where many cannot.’
    ‘Who?’
    The one-handed Roman glanced to where the cavalrymen were walking their horses. ‘Serpentius has a leopard’s instinct for survival. He lived through four years and a hundred fights in the arena and he has saved my life more times than I care to remember. If anyone can reach Rome, he can.’
    Otho nodded thoughtfully. ‘Then he can guide me.’
    Valerius shook his head. ‘You are too conspicuous and too important to risk. I don’t know the details of your mission, but I understand why you were chosen. Senator Galba believes you have access to men on the Palatine and in the Senate who can persuade Nero to give up the purple and declare Galba his successor. That may be true, but it is also possible that Marcus Salvius Otho is being asked to place his head in the lion’s jaws.’ He hesitated, waiting for a reaction, but Otho remained silent, barely breathing and tense as a full-drawn bowstring. ‘What if there was another man, with similar access? A simple soldier,but one who once wore the Gold Crown of Valour? A bauble, and an undeserved one, but a bauble which impressed the impressionable. Even the Emperor was dazzled by its glitter. And there were others.’
    Otho’s eyes turned calculating. ‘Perhaps my mission would be beyond the wit of a simple soldier?’
    ‘It is true that I am no politician.’ Valerius shrugged. ‘But Nero chose me to hunt down Petrus and I won Corbulo’s trust even when he thought me a spy.’ And, he thought, you know I brought secret messages of support to Galba from Vespasian in Alexandria, even if you don’t know the price he asked. ‘How can I make a decision until I have more details of Galba’s plan?’
    Otho made him wait, pacing the river bank while he turned the proposition over in his mind before beginning to speak. ‘Nero is finished. He has lost the Senate, the people and, more important, most of the army.