To Be Wolves, page 1
Other Books by
Debra May MacLeod
The Vestal Virgins novels
Brides of Rome
Copyright © 2021 by Debra May Macleod
E-book published in 2021 by Blackstone Publishing
Cover design by Alenka Vdovič Linaschke
Forum Romanum illustration by Ana Rey
Book logo by Jeanine Henning
All rights reserved. This book or any portion
thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner
whatsoever without the express written permission
of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations
in a book review.
Any historical figures and events referenced in this book
are depicted in a fictitious manner. All other characters
and events are products of the author’s imagination, and
any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Trade e-book ISBN 978-1-0940-0029-9
Library e-book ISBN 978-1-0940-0028-2
Fiction / Historical / Ancient
CIP data for this book is available
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Blackstone Publishing
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Author’s Note
At the front of this book, you’ll find a simplified illustration of the Roman Forum and the structures mentioned in the story.
At the back, I have included a dramatis personae, or cast of characters. You’ll also find other reader-friendly resources there, including the names of the gods and mythical figures mentioned in the book, a glossary of Latin and other important terms, and several illustrations that tie into the story line and which I think you’ll find fascinating.
Thank you for reading.
Prologue
Extremis Malis Extrema Remedia
Desperate times call for desperate measures
—a Roman adage
picenum, 72 bce
General Marcus Licinius Crassus secured his formed leather cuirass around his torso and then placed his deep purple cloak over his shoulders, fastening it at one shoulder with a large gold fibula. It was cool in his large officer’s tent despite the fact that it was made of insulating goatskin and a decent fire had burned all night. He exhaled tiredly at the thought of what was about to happen and saw his breath form an icy cloud in the air.
The Roman legionary soldiers that stood outside his tent heard him approach and pulled the flaps open for him to exit. He stepped out to an even cooler morning. Multiple snapping fires were burning in the dismal tent camp, and he could hear the banging of pots as a sprawling troop of cooks cleaned up after the monumental task of feeding three legions, nearly fifteen thousand men, their breakfast of gruel. Crassus hadn’t eaten. He had no appetite.
The thick fog that had settled over the camp and the nearby hills of the Apennines in the earliest hours hadn’t lifted but seemed even heavier as day broke. Yet to Crassus it wasn’t thick enough. It could never be thick enough to obscure the haunting sight that every soldier knew was still there on the high edge of one of the hills before them.
He inhaled a chestful of the cool air and looked up at them: the bodies of six Roman soldiers hanging from crosses, their heads now dropped forward in what Crassus hoped was the mercy of death and not just exhaustion. He blinked. In the fog, they looked like ghosts suspended in the deathly mists of Hades.
But they weren’t ghosts. They were his men—the bravest of his men—captured in battle by those filthy followers of the rebel slave leader Spartacus and crucified in full view of the great Roman army. Or at least what was left of it.
Before the rise of Spartacus’s slave army, it had been centuries since the Roman military had had to contend with desertions. Sure, the odd fool still tried to make a run for it now and then, but it wasn’t a serious problem. Roman soldiers were the most courageous, skilled, and well-paid in the world. They were also the most successful. Many enemies surrendered without a fight; such fear did the tactics of the Roman military machine put in their hearts.
The problem for Crassus and other generals was that Spartacus knew those tactics. He had served in the army before a charge of insubordination had seen him reduced to slavery. After subsisting for years as a gladiator, he had escaped and gathered his own army. Now, he used Roman psychological warfare tactics against its own soldiers. He knew what scared them. He knew what made them run. And it was the ghostly sight above them.
Crassus heard footsteps behind him. He turned and nodded a somber greeting to the young general that Pompey had sent to help him crush Spartacus, a particularly capable man by the name of Julius Caesar. Caesar offered him a piece of bread. He accepted and took a single bite, then tossed the bread aside. Four or five crows descended upon it, cawing and croaking at each other as they ate.
“The men are ready for you, General,” said Caesar.
Crassus didn’t move.
Caesar’s sharp features, which always gave him an air of seriousness, appeared even more severe against the dreariness of the morning. He cleared his throat. “Sir, my exploratores estimate that over half of Spartacus’s men, perhaps as many as twenty thousand, are no longer moving northward. They have turned, and are heading south—”
“To Rome,” said Crassus.
“To Rome,” echoed Caesar. “After the defeat of so many of our legions, they are emboldened. They aren’t content with escape. They want to conquer.” He threw his own half-eaten piece of bread to the crows. “We cannot lose any more cohorts to desertion.”
“Spartacus cannot reach Rome,” said Crassus, as much to himself as to Caesar. “He will take the city if he reaches it.”
“Yes,” said Caesar, “he will.” The young general squared his shoulders. “The men are ready for you.”
Crassus turned on his heel and walked past his tent, past the cooks, past the tethered horses that neighed and shook their manes, waiting impatiently for their morning barley.
The entire Fourth Roman Cohort—five hundred soldiers dressed in helmets and full armor—stood at attention, arrayed in five manageable, well-spaced rows of one hundred men each.
They were surrounded by even more men from Crassus’s newest legions—fresh legions, soldiers brought in from the provinces and pulled from other campaigns. And still more were on their way.
It’s about bloody time, thought Crassus. Every time Spartacus’s army of slaves won a battle, every time they made it a mile closer to Rome, the Senate took Crassus’s warnings a little more seriously. At least now Crassus had the manpower to put up a real fight—that is, providing his men didn’t break and run.
Unfortunately, that’s exactly what many men in the Fourth Cohort had done. Not all of them—some had held their ground and fought Spartacus’s wild mob, even after defeat was certain—but that didn’t matter. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. An army is only as strong as its weakest soldier.
As centurions walked up and down the rows of soldiers to maintain order, their red cloaks flowing behind them and their hands on the hilts of their daggers, Crassus mounted his white warhorse, placed his helmet on his head, and rode before his men. Caesar did the same, moving his horse alongside Crassus’s.
“Desertion is the plague of our army,” Crassus shouted. “It is a contagion that our legions do not often suffer, but it has returned as a sickness that threatens the life of Rome itself. Today, we will cure that sickness before it can spread to one more Roman soldier.”
Crassus hesitated. He had a reputation for being harsh . . . but was this going too far?
He glanced over his shoulder, into the distance. The fog was clearing. The six crucified soldiers on the hill seemed to hang in the air above them.
Crassus imagined Spartacus’s men breaking through the gates of Rome. He tried not to imagine what they would do to the women and children they found there. He tried not to imagine what they would do in the streets, in the temples, in the Senate house. They would lay waste to the Eternal City the way they had laid waste to every village they moved through: thieving, beating, raping, and tearing down what greater men had built up.
They would inspire every slave in every household, no matter how rich or modest, to rise up against their master and join their mutinous army. It would no longer be just a military loss. It would be the loss of a civilization that Romulus and the gods themselves had founded.
Crassus lifted his head. “You are the sons of Rome,” he shouted. “You are the wolves that tear out the throats of our enemies.” He moved his horse to stand in front of the Fourth Cohort, Caesar still at his side. “But some of you have forgotten yourselves,” he said. “I am here to remind you.” He looked down at the centurion who stood before the first row of one hundred men and gave the order. “Decimation.”
The centurion balked. Had he heard that correctly? He opened his mouth, closed it, and then asked, “Should they draw lots, General?” Despite his long career, he had never seen this done. No one had. It was an archaic form of discipline that the Roman army had abandoned hundreds of years ago.
“We don’t have time for theater,” said Crassus. “Count them off.”
“Yes, sir.”
The centurion straightened. It was better he did it without thinking. He began to walk along the row, counting each man as he went. “One, two, three,
“Remove your armor,” the centurion shouted at the ten men.
The men exchanged looks of disbelief. Was this really happening? Decimation was just a ghost story. Yet as the reality of it descended upon them, they did what Roman soldiers were supposed to do. They followed orders. Of the ten men, Crassus recognized only the first one. Was his name Gaius? He frowned. He doubted this man was a deserter. Crassus had seen him drag two of his wounded fellow soldiers off the battlefield and then return to it himself, even while others fled into the surrounding forest.
He thought for a moment about stopping it, about making an exception, but he knew he could not. There can be no weak link, he reminded himself. Decimation was an effective, albeit desperate, way to deter soldiers from deserting, yet it only worked because everyone in the offending cohort was equally vulnerable: courageous or cowardly, young or old, soldier or officer. No exceptions. Every tenth man—decimus—selected at random.
Ignoring the doubts in his mind and the cramping in his gut, Crassus compelled himself to keep his chin up and his eyes on the man named Gaius. After all, thousands of legionary soldiers had their eyes on him. He needed to look like he was certain about what he was doing. He was the man in charge.
Slowly, Gaius removed his helmet. He held it in his hands for several long moments and then turned around to face his fellow soldiers.
They all had their eyes to the ground.
“Lucius,” he said to one of them.
One of the soldiers looked at him. “Gaius, my brother,” he said, “I am sorry.”
Gaius tossed his helmet at the man. “Make sure my son gets my armor,” he said. “Tell him I died on the battlefield.”
“He will be proud of you,” said Lucius. “I will see to it.”
As if he were doing nothing more than undressing for the bath, Gaius unpinned his red cloak and let it fall to the ground. He unfastened the leather belts of his iron armor, set it down a few steps away, and then returned to stand in the same spot. Now wearing only a simple red woolen tunica, he dropped his arms to his sides.
“Begin!” the centurion ordered.
Not a man moved.
“Begin,” the centurion barked again, “or we’ll take every fifth man!”
Gaius nodded at his friend. “Do it. Quickly.”
The other man’s nostrils flared. He raised his club and struck Gaius on the skull. The soldier stumbled backward and fell to the ground as other men joined in, some crying out prayers to the gods and others shamed apologies to the man they bludgeoned.
It was a disgrace to die by decimation. It was an even greater disgrace to survive.
Gaius’s fellow soldiers—his friends, the men with whom he had marched under the Eagle to foreign lands and back, men who knew his dreams and the names of his children—raised their clubs and beat him as hard as they could, hoping that each strike of the club would end their friend’s suffering and their own shame.
Within two minutes, Gaius’s mangled body lay bloody and broken on the ground. Lucius forced himself to look at it, but what lay before him was unrecognizable as his friend. Gaius’s skull had collapsed inward: white splinters of bone and red chunks of brain were draining out of it, like wine spilling slowly out of a cracked cup. His jaw jutted out at a grotesque, stomach-churning angle, and his arms and legs twitched as the nerves continued to fire.
It happened that way, exactly that way, another forty-nine times that day. Crassus watched every decimation from atop his horse. After the fiftieth soldier had stopped breathing and the weary soldiers had stepped back into line, the general galloped his horse to stand before the vast swaths of his legions. He put his hand on the hilt of his sword, one side of which boasted a gold medallion of the legendary Roman she-wolf, the other the fiery goddess Vesta.
“What you have done to your brothers today, on this battlefield, is nothing compared to what Spartacus will do to your sons, your wives, and your mothers if he reaches the gates of Rome. You are Romans,” he shouted and thrust his sword into the air. “You were raised by a wolf to be wolves! Now go tear out some throats.”
Chapter I
Graviora Quaedam Sunt Remedia Periculis
Some remedies are worse than the disease.
—Publilius Syrus
Rome, 21 BCE
Fifty-one years later
Two Vestal Virgins stood before a white marble pedestal in the dimly lit bedchamber of the emperor Caesar Augustus, their palms up to the goddess in somber prayer. On top of the pedestal sat a wide bronze bowl within which burned the sacred fire of Vesta. It crackled and snapped, consuming the consecrated kindling the Vestals had placed in its orange flames.
Only steps away from the fire, Octavian lay drenched in sweat on his bed. The priestess Tuccia looked down at him and frowned at his drawn and pale face, the raspy sounds of his shallow breaths. It wasn’t that long ago that he had ridden around the Circus Maximus and the streets of Rome in the jeweled chariot of his joyous triumphal procession, a gilded crown of laurels held over his head by a slave who whispered into his ear, “Remember, thou art mortal.”
At the time, he had hardly seemed it. The grand parade and the spoils of war, the masses of cheering spectators—they had all seemed endless. Tuccia remembered the look in Caesar’s cool gray eyes as he had stood on the Rostra and gazed down on his people, more god than man, as the look-alikes of General Antony and Queen Cleopatra were killed before him.
But the slave was right. He was mortal after all.
Livia emerged from the shadows to stand beside Tuccia. Her hair was pulled back into a loose bun and her face, though as appealing and regal as ever, looked tired. She sighed and stared down at her failing husband. His fingers and his mottled flesh twitched in a perverse fashion that made her skin crawl as if it were covered in beetles. She put her hands on her hips and turned to her husband’s Greek physician, an irritatingly tall man named Antonius Musa.
“We send Mercury himself to retrieve you from that cesspit Athens, and you can’t even stop a simple spasm?”
“The spasm is a good sign, Empress,” he replied.
“The spasm is a good sign?” Livia raised her eyebrows. “Did you hear that, Priestess Nona? The spasm is a good sign. Well, in that case, Musa, let’s have one of the stable boys sit on his chest. Weak breath is a good sign too, nay?”
“Lady Livia,” said Nona, “make another offering to Apollo.”
As the physician mouthed a silent “Thank you” to the elder priestess, Livia crossed the expansive floor of the bedchamber and stopped at the sacrificial altar to Apollo that had been hastily erected in Caesar’s room the day before. A priest of Apollo stood beside it, murmuring soft petitions to the god of healing.
Livia took a pinch of loose salted flour and sprinkled it into the thick flame of a beeswax candle that sat in the center of the altar, at the base of a golden statue of Apollo. Twin baby goats—they looked like they had been pulled from their mother’s womb early—lay dead-eyed on either side of the statue, the blood from their opened throats now sticky and rank. Beside them sat a patera of oil for libations.
Livia placed her hands on the edge of the altar and knelt before it, looking up into the sapphire eyes of the god. The low voices of Apollo’s priest and Vesta’s priestesses in prayer mingled in the space behind her.
In prayer for Caesar’s life. Her husband’s life.
A flickering shadow moved across the frescoed walls of the firelit room, and Livia sensed movement behind her. A moment later her son Tiberius appeared at her side. He placed a small terracotta statue of Asclepius next to one of the fetal goats, gripped the edge of the altar, and knelt beside her. He looked sideways at the priest of Apollo as if to say, “Leave us,” and the robed figure slunk away.
“Mother,” he whispered, “Octavia has succumbed.”
Livia exhaled through her nose. She wasn’t surprised. Octavia’s son, Marcellus, had died months earlier from the contagion and she had never fully recovered. Neither had Octavian, for that matter. The death of his nephew and heir had left him a weaker man. She heard him groan behind her. “If he dies, we’re as good as dead.” She put her head in her hands. “Gods.”
