Chapter 1 The Road to Descent

The coastal road ended where the mountain began. Aulus Corvinus had traveled this road for nine days on horseback, through the coastal lowlands where the air tasted of salt and olive groves, then upward into the terraced hills where the soil turned dark and the farmers' faces grew harder. Now, on the tenth morning, the road was nothing more than a track cut into loose volcanic scree, and the horse beneath him—a scarred grey mare the quartermaster at Rhegium had been eager to sell—picked her way forward with the reluctance of an animal that knew what waited ahead. Behind him, a single legionary escort had fallen back two miles ago, claiming a lame knee. Corvinus did not blame the man. There was no glory in escorting a disgraced officer to a forgotten garrison. The legionary had been young enough still to care about the opinions of his fellows, and being seen riding at the rear of a man stripped of his decorations was the sort of association that followed a soldier like tar on a cloak. Corvinus did not look back. He had learned, in the months since the trial, that looking backward was a luxury reserved for men who still had something to return to. The mountain rose ahead of him. Mount Etna, the locals called it—though the Greek farmers who worked its lower slopes had other names, older ones, names that predated Rome and would outlast it. The great peak was capped with a haze of smoke that drifted eastward like a grey banner, thin and constant, the mountain's way of announcing that it was alive and watching. Corvinus had seen Etna before, years ago, when the Legion II had marched through Sicily on its way to a garrison posting in the east. He had been twenty-two then, fresh from his training, burning with the certainty that the Republic's roads led everywhere worth going. He was thirty-one now, and the road had led him here. The track crested a ridge, and below, in a shallow bowl carved into the mountainside by some ancient violence of the earth, lay the town of Petra. It was smaller than he had expected. The walls were old—Greek-built, probably, from the look of the stonework, though the Romans had repaired them in places with concrete and crude mortar. A single gate faced the road, flanked by two watchtowers that leaned slightly inward, as if exhausted. Beyond the walls, a jumble of flat-roofed buildings descended toward a central square, and above them all, on a rocky outcrop that commanded the town like a fist raised against the sky, stood the temple. He could not make out much of the temple from this distance. It was dark stone, older than the walls, and it seemed to grow out of the rock itself rather than being built upon it. A column of smoke rose from its peak—not the mountain's smoke, but something thinner, more deliberate. Incense, perhaps, or a sacrificial fire. Someone in Petra still worshipped the old gods with proper form. Corvinus urged the mare down the slope. The track switchbacked through loose gravel and scrubby bushes that had the grey-green look of plants accustomed to breathing ash. The air here was different from the coast. It carried a mineral bite, a faint sulfur tang that settled in the back of the throat and refused to leave. Beneath it, if he held still and breathed carefully, he could detect something else—the deep, subterranean rumble that was not thunder, not the wind, but the mountain itself, clearing its throat. He reached the gate by midday. Two soldiers in rust-patched armor lounged against the gateposts, their spears propped against the wall. One of them—a thick-necked man with a scar across his chin that suggested a past acquaintance with a short sword—looked Corvinus over with the frank assessment of a man who judged others solely by what they could be expected to carry. "Corvinus," said the officer at the gate. He had a tablet in his hand, and he checked it twice before nodding. "Tribune. Formerly of the Fourth Macedonica." He paused, and something shifted in his expression—not quite pity, not quite contempt. "You're expected. Quartermaster's in the square, the governor's house is on the north side, the garrison barracks are east of the temple. Your orders?" "My orders are to report to the garrison commander and serve at his discretion," Corvinus said. His voice was flat. He had practiced it that way. "That'd be centurion Vorenus. He's not here right now. Gone to Catania for supplies—been gone a week, should be back in three." The guard shrugged. "Garrison's been running itself. You can find a bunk in the east barracks. Officer's quarters are the three rooms above the armory, but the roof leaks." Corvinus dismounted and walked through the gate. The town received him in silence. Petra was a place accustomed to strangers passing through on their way to somewhere else, and a man on a tired horse did not merit much curiosity. The streets were narrow and shadowed, paved with the same dark stone as the walls, and they smelled of wood smoke, animal dung, and something sharper that he could not identify. A few shop fronts were open, though none showed much merchandise. A woman hauling a water jar looked up at him, marked the military cloak and empty scabbard, and looked away again. He found the barracks east of the temple, a long stone building with a red-tiled roof that had seen better decades. Inside, the common room held a dozen men in various states of undress and intoxication. They looked up at his entrance with the dull hostility of soldiers who had been abandoned by the empire and knew it. "You the new man?" asked a voice from the corner. An older soldier, bald and heavy through the shoulders, was cleaning a sword with slow, deliberate strokes. His armor was better maintained than anything else in the room. "Corvinus. Tribune." The bald man snorted. "Tribune. That's a grand word for a man with no legion." He held out a hand that was thick with callus and scarred across the knuckles. "Gaius Maro. Veteran. Twenty-three years in the service, and the last three in this—" He gestured with the sword at the walls, the leaking roof, the slouching soldiers. "—this paradise." "How many men in the garrison?" Corvinus asked. "Forty-three, counting you and the two at the gate. Thirty-eight on paper, but three of those are in the jail for stabbing each other over a woman in Catania, and one is—" Maro paused, choosing his words. "One is in the temple. Hasn't come down in a month. The priestess says he's undergoing a spiritual trial. I say he's gone mad." "And the commander?" "Vorenus is a decent man. Tries. But decent men don't last long in places like this." Maro returned to his sword. "Word of advice, Tribune. Don't try to be anything here. Don't try to reform us, or drill us, or make us into something we're not. We're the men Rome threw away. We know it, and we've made our peace with it. If you can make yours, you'll survive." Corvinus looked at the room—the peeling plaster, the cracked floor tiles, the soldiers who had turned their attention back to their cups and dice games. He thought of the trial. He thought of the general's face as the sentence was read: exile to a frontier posting, reduction to auxiliary status, loss of all decorations and distinctions earned in eight years of service. He thought of the reason—his refusal to carry out an order that would have sent three hundred auxiliary cavalry into a mountain pass where the terrain made a coordinated retreat impossible, an order that would have saved the general's reputation at the cost of three hundred lives. Three hundred lives. That was what his honor had cost him. And now he was here, in a garrison of forty-three men at the foot of a smoking mountain, and the life he had known was over. He found his bunk in the officer's quarters—three bare rooms above the armory, the roof indeed leaking, the walls bare save for a scratched carving of a legionary's eagle that someone had made long ago in better times. He sat on the narrow bed and listened to the mountain. It was always there. Not the sound of it—the deep pulse of it, felt in the chest more than heard in the ears. A rhythm. A breathing. The mountain was alive, and it was watching. Corvinus lay back and stared at the cracked ceiling. Tomorrow he would begin whatever life remained to him. Tonight, he would listen to the earth breathe, and he would think about three hundred men who were alive because he had refused an order. It was not enough. It would never be enough. But it was what he had. ---