Octavian smiled. “There is something beautiful in that, I think. They will write stories about it one day. There is something noble and admirable about it. And I am sorry that this same choice, beautiful though it was, meant that I could not know her better. I am sorry that she had to die. It wasn’t right, what happened.”
This was, Selene thought, perhaps the closest thing to an apology that she would ever receive from him for the loss of her family. But it wouldn’t bring back the dead, she reminded herself. And if he expected her to forgive him, she would not give him that pleasure. “What would you have preferred?”
“I was a younger man then,” Octavian said. He looked back to the legions for a moment. “I wanted a Triumph. I wanted glory.”
Selene, too, looked out toward the advancing men. The trained discipline of the men meant that the three columns moved like living things. “Is that not what you want now? Isn’t that what you want here?”
“Glory? If there is glory here, it belongs to Rome.”
“Rome cares nothing for Vellica,” Selene said. She saw that a few of the other officers surrounding them tensed up, but none interrupted or seemed to even acknowledge her.
“For Vellica? No. Not even for the whole of Cantabria,” Octavian agreed. “But Rome cares for its honor. These lands belong to Rome, and we will not suffer the dishonor of losing them.”
“The Cantabrians were here long before Rome claimed these lands.”
“This is true. And the pharaohs of old were native Egyptians before your ancestor, Ptolemy, replaced them with Greeks. I don’t favor a claim because of its antiquity. I favor a claim because it is true and just and right.”
Justice? What justice had Rome ever brought for her? Or for Juba? Where was justice for her dead brothers? For Caesarion?
“It’s peace, Selene.” There was a fervor to Octavian’s voice that brought her attention back to him. She saw that he was staring at her with a focused intensity. “That’s what lies beyond this bloodshed,” he said. “Perhaps not for these men here. Perhaps not for me or even you. But in generations to come there will be a Rome without war. Without bandits upon the roads. Without squabbles amid petty kings. There will be a peace the likes of which no one has seen before: the Pax Romana. That’s the dream, Selene. That’s the glory. I didn’t always realize it before, but I know it now.”
“The Peace of Rome.” Selene spoke the words as if they were a foreign thing.
“When all the world is Rome,” Tiberius said, “there will be no one left to fight.”
Selene blinked, speechless as she looked between Augustus and Tiberius, one staring at her, the other staring away. For a moment she wondered if Alexander the Great had ever spoken such words. Had peace been his goal, too?
“Cleopatra understood this,” Caesar said.
“My mother?”
“She knew it better than most. My father, Julius. Your father, Mark Antony. She may have loved them, but she was no fool. Egypt is pyramids and tombs in the sand. Its time has come and gone. Rome is the future. She and I wanted the same thing.”
Selene didn’t know if she wanted to scream or throw up. She shook her head, knowing that she shouldn’t be doing so.
If Caesar was upset by her show of disagreement, though, he didn’t show it. Instead he straightened up in his saddle, and he swept his arm over the marching legions toward the hillfort ahead. “You tell me Rome doesn’t care for Vellica. But don’t you see? This land, these people … all of it will be Rome. You’ve seen their contempt for human life. Coming here you saw with your own eyes the carnage they have wrought. They are lawless barbarians, and a restless brutality is all they’ve ever known. I can change that, Selene. We can all change that. We bring them peace. We bring them Rome.”
“The Cantabrian, Caesar,” one of the officers said.
Augustus turned in his saddle to look back where Corocotta was striding out of the palisades of the camp, flanked by two praetorians. The little crippled slave girl who served as his translator hurried as fast as she could in his wake, hobbling with a crutch under her arm. The Cantabrian slowed as he passed the wagon, seeming to gauge it with his eyes, and then he was standing beside Selene, towering over her in a way that for a moment made her imagine a bearded, wild-haired Pullo—except that where Pullo was a man who’d been quick to smile and laugh and tousle her hair, Corocotta’s face seemed to be fixed in a fierce look of determination, and he acted as if he gave no thought to her presence at all.
“Corocotta,” Augustus said. Though on horseback, he didn’t need to look down far to address the standing man. “I am glad you have come.”
The Cantabrian didn’t look back to see if his translator had caught up. He simply began to speak, his rough voice a low rumble.
Panting, appearing pained, the little slave girl came up to stand at his side. “My lord Corocotta,” she said between gulping breaths, “he says he is … a man of his word. Said he would stand … beside the Lord Caesar.”
Augustus smiled and nodded toward the cart. “One million Sesterces. I, too, am a man of my word.”
Corocotta looked back at the cart, grunted, and then stepped forward ahead of Selene so that he stood between her and the mounted Augustus. The other members of the general staff shifted themselves to give him plenty of space in which to position himself, and Corocotta turned to face the valley below, crossing his arms as he did so. Without looking at the man on horseback beside him, he spoke something in his strange language.
The crippled girl moved forward so that she stood behind Selene, to the right of her master, leaning tiredly on her crutch. “Lord Corocotta says that you started without him,” she translated.
Augustus smiled and for the second time in as many minutes he gestured toward the columns that were now halfway across the open valley. “Just getting into position,” he said. “You’ve come at the perfect time. Carisius?”
The field general snapped to attention. “Yes, Caesar?”
“Signal halt.”
“Yes, Caesar.” Carisius turned back toward the valley, and from the side Selene was certain she saw a smile on his face. “Praetors, signal your centurions. Consiste.”
Three other generals nodded and spoke the order to three more men, who in turn spoke to three men who lifted the horns that stood at their feet and hefted them onto their shoulders. In perfect coordination, the three men stepped forward two paces from the group. Moving from left to right, they each blew a single note that echoed over the troops, and Selene recognized that each of the horns—metal tubes that ran in a near-circle from a man’s lips around his back and over his shoulder—gave a different sound. Her supposition that each tone was meant for a specific legion was confirmed when the three columns immediately halted their march.
Corocotta grunted, though Selene didn’t know if the sound signified approval of the precision or annoyance at the break in the action.
“Very good,” Augustus said, and at the same time Selene heard a kind of unintelligible shout from the walls of Vellica. They, too, were getting ready for the fight.
“I believe we have their attention, Caesar,” Carisius said.
“Then let’s give them something to look at,” Augustus replied. “Form up the right and center. Leave the left in column for the flank.”
Carisius nodded and signaled to the two praetors of those legions. “Ad aciem.”
Seconds later, the right and center horns sounded again. And in their wake she heard the distant barking of the centurions ordering the legionnaires into battle lines.
The front rows of the two columns stood still, but behind them the rest of the legions, to Selene’s amazement, rolled forward and out, unfolding as they morphed from a vertical line of men to a horizontal one. In a matter of minutes the battle line of the Roman legionnaires appeared to be at least a thousand men wide and perhaps three or four men deep. When the last row locked itself into position, the men in front gave a unified shout and readied their shields in time with a great stomp of feet.