The Bane of Gods: A Novel of Germania and Rome (Hraban Chronicles Book 5) Read online

  Veleda – the girl Hraban must find for Tear and Odo.

  Visurgis River – Weser River.

  Volones – a Parthian agent

  Wandal – Hraban's ham-fisted, slow-witted friend. Son of Euric.

  Woden – also known as Odin, the leader of the Aesir gods, one of the creators of men and the world.

  Woden's Gift – spawn of Draupnir, Woden's ring, the influential ancient ring of Hraban's family.

  Wulf – a vitka from village of Hraban. One of the few who are trying to stop the prophecy that will end the world. Hraban's former tutor, foe to Maroboodus.

  Wyrd – fate in Germanic mythology.

  Yggdrasill – the world tree, where the nine worlds hang from. Source of all life.

  Zahar – see Tear.

  ALBION (A.D. 42)

  You are lucky to be alive, you half-mad bastard.

  Though, of course, luck had nothing to do with it. Nay, Fortuna slept while you ran to die with men you call friends and allies.

  I risked my neck while she turned a blind eye on your idiocy, you ungrateful little shit.

  And now?

  Now we are in trouble. Escaping the Roman legions and their scum allies was always the plan, my plan, but escaping them with the Romans crawling across the hills and the woods hot on our tails was not how I envisioned it. Loping away from the enemy like a fox before a pack of feral hounds is what we have been reduced to, instead of being far away by now, and in safety.

  You can blame me for wanting to beat you blue with a good stick, but few others would. I was tempted to do just that ever since I pushed you from my horse after the bloody rescue, but instead I sat over you, holding your face in a puddle of shitty water to calm you down. I admit that made me smile, but I am not smiling now. Not with Roman speculatores and auxilia almost in sight, and perhaps even before us, if they know their business.

  You damned well have not listened to me.

  We have a deal.

  Oh, aye, you say I made the deal up by myself, but since I have the sword, and I saved your ass from Rome, the deal holds. I fulfilled my oath to your father Armin. You are alive. You will be free. And for that, you will find my daughter Lif, and read my story to her from this damned codex I have been lugging around since I found it in Jerusalem. You will, or I’ll come back from the dead and keep you awake until you weep.

  You tried to break the deal.

  I do not appreciate it.

  I rub my eyes, tired.

  Oh, I know your complaints. The honorless, fearful flight doesn’t suit your high sense of justice, no.

  My plan always called for us to desert the Celts.

  Always!

  That was a fine plan. A well-made plan. It was a plan worth following, since I have seen war, battles, and Midgard’s blood soaked mud aplenty, and know a hopeless cause when I see one. Smile at hopeless causes, Thumelicus. Give the men who believe in those some hope by nods and perhaps even lies, for they need even false hope, and then leave them to it.

  You made your own plans. You decided that false hope could turn into real hope, and then you took a shit on my plans, and our deal.

  Oh aye, you won’t weep for me. Never for me.

  Never for the Oath Breaker.

  Obedience. That’s all I need.

  Just obedience.

  I rub my face, and sigh.

  As it is with children, one can never expect obedience.

  I watch our companions, with one of whom I have developed something of a relationship, stare my way, and I know I have been growling aloud. There is no fire, no hot food, no safety, and I worry them with my mood more than the auxilia does. They know my moods can lead to grave-digging. So, I calm myself, like a storm might, slowly, with fierce stabs of lighting growing into warning flashes on a dark sky, high above. It is ever hard for me to calm down. You, Thumelicus, do not even turn your head, bound and trussed and tied to a tree like a dog, but I know you are listening.

  Woden has rarely left me in my hour of need.

  Perhaps your disobedience will have some positive outcome? If not for us, then perhaps for you alone? I do wonder if you learnt anything in the butchery of a battle you ran into. If you did, I beg you shall remember it. There was no hope, Thumelicus. There never was. For years, the Celts of Albion have feared the coming of Rome, for years, they have contemplated on how to defeat the legions, praying for a storm to sink the galleys, and at the same time they have fought amongst themselves like starving rats. You, son of a man who once ate legions, were a fine ornament for them to grace their ranks with. Honor demanded you join them, eh? Oh, aye. Honor our oath to fight for Togodumnus, in return for his hospitality? Yes, you spat and wept those words at me after I pulled you from the puddle. I, the accursed Oath Breaker, as you called me, quite rightly, did let down our host. I broke an oath. One of the many, as you know.

  To fight with the rabble against Rome? To give your valor, and your famous name to the use of Togodumnus? The son of the Wolf Killer dying for them? Armin’s son dead in Albion? And I next to him?

  A fine, toast-worthy dream! Let the fools dream and toast such dead heroes.

  I break oaths.

  Escape again, Thumelicus, and I, an old man, will damned well put you in irons and make a slave of you.

  I rub my face, and try to calm myself. Again. The thunder is there, and I push it away.

  Here we are. Still alive.

  While you fled with Togodumnus and Caratacus, and left me to my own devices, I cannot deny feeling some pride for the hero you tried to act like. A warrior seeking death at the hands of the Romans, fighting like an escapee from Asgaard is a tale we all would love to hear. A poet could sing of you, son of Armin, who fled his craven captor and fought alongside the damned Catuvellauni, and the eleven doomed tribes. You gave all against Rome, or attempted to. It was an inspiring sight, I grant you that. I too was moved by the sight of the tribes arrayed in their colorful trousers, some stark naked as the wolf and bear warriors of the Germani, full of pride in their ancestry, family, and gods, many calling for Teutonis, for Bel, for others I don’t give a shit about, standing tall and fey under their standards, on a hillside before a cold, shallow river and many well-armed with metal swords, axes, spears, and courage.

  Aye, a fine sight it was. Tens of thousands of heroes all about to die.

  But such sight pales before the legions in their fey battle mood, most all silent, eyes glinting under the helmets, the hamata lorica and the shit bad segmented armor, shields up and coming for you.

  I saw you fight, while I made for the battle.

  I saw you, oh yes. I saw you, exhorting the shaken Celts, a sword high in the wind, bloodied, a young lord of war, standing on a dead Roman centurion, surrounded by the champions of Togodumnus. The battle was lost; but you stood there, proud like a bloodied boar.

  The sight was one for the gods, indeed.

  And Armin would have killed you himself, had he seen it. He was brave as any, Thumelicus. Brave like the best of us, but never a fool to fight to the very end, when the cause was so clearly lost. As three of the tribes fled, their chariots spewing mud in their wake, you too must have known better. I had to come down there in that rout to fetch you, and then I hated you when the Batavi auxilia charged the Catuvellauni. I have fought in a dozen wars, and many more terrible battles, I had no wish to risk fighting those men. But enter the battle I did, I pulled you from it, overpowered you while slingshots and javelins killed the damned Catuvellauni, and took a horse from a Celt chief. You mewled and bawled as I hauled you away, but so I did. You demanded I let you go, as you saw Togodumnus die amid a hard-fighting Batavi turma.

  You must know it now.

  Our time in Albion is over.

  It’s been six months since the Romans arrived, though they didn’t come to Camulodunum at first. They landed south, and came at us from that direction, and the great battle where the tribes fought surprisingly well, was lost nonetheless. It is over. Our time, and Albion’s as wel
l.

  I turn my eyes to the dark sea. Your eyes will smolder with resentful anger, and I feel the same distrust and unease as I always did while I was with your father, Armin. Like it was with Armin, we must trust each other, but Armin and I didn’t, nor will you and me. We liked each other when we sat and drank mead, and spoke of other things than Rome, war, and the future of Germania, but the gods pushed us on different currents.

  I lift a cup of wine and search the night for any sign of that damned Batavi auxilia, or other Roman speculatores who are ever scouting ahead in local garb. They might already be ahead of us, for all I know, as we head north. We will have no easy way out if the village of Wheel Cove has fallen.

  We could flee to the depths of the land, and I am hoping Rome thinks we did.

  No, we are going back over to Northern Gaul. Then, we shall continue up the coast to where the Frisii live, depending on the weather.

  We must hurry.

  The nightly coast is dark, and only the burning villages to the south herald where the Roman auxilia are causing chaos. Claudius is here to take the land for his glory, but he is keen for our lives, our silence. The secrets he knows I know that might end his reign motivate him as much as the land and the fame does. The Claudius who fooled us all for years is claiming Albion, but he won’t claim us, if only Woden aids us. He might. He has before, though he might be bored with the constant need to do so. I lift my cup to the darkness and bid farewell to mighty Togodumnus, the king I helped during our time in Albion who offered his protection to us, and beg his brother Caratacus won’t find us. He, and his brother will be trying to find our trail as much as the Romans are, if they can spare the time, and the anger and disappointment at what I had to do will make them my bitter enemies. Armin’s son won’t help them rally what remains of the land.

  They think they need you.

  “A lot of weight they put on a pup’s shoulders,” I chuckle.

  “What did you say, old man? Did you find your courage in the cup?” you growl without looking at me, and I laugh. You are much like your father, but lack the sense, and the calm. You are a Germani, despite your long years as a slave in Italy, but Armin was part Roman, in thinking at least.

  His vision was grander than his anger and his patience made it possible for him to conquer that anger, and he had plenty of anger, simmering under his god-like beauty. There was plenty, especially after he was captured by Augustus, and made into a Roman soldier. He watched my struggles in Rome, as he too suffered and served. He saw what Livia did to us, and what I had to do for her, and others. He was made into a Roman, served as a Praetorian, a servant to the highest men of Rome, and all that time he hoped, and waited. He accepted his slavery, then his honors, but he waited, and when the time was right, he acted.

  He failed, many times, and nearly fell trying, but he was lucky. And he had me.

  Your father needed swords. I was one. We hurt each other, we betrayed each other, but finally, at least for a while, we found a common cause.

  Though, as you will find out Thumelicus, there were shadows where Hraban had to tread; and your father would have done well to find swords elsewhere.

  For what happened, I owe him. Now I am paying back my debts. With my final years I am enduring shit and using my very last shreds of luck, you will give me no more trouble. I will save you, you will tell my daughter my story, and that is all there is to it. We will find a boat in Grim Cove. We will cross the sea and beg gods we can pass through the land without being noticed.

  In the meantime, hoping we shall survive, I will write when I can. I will tell you, Thumelicus, who would ride to die in Albion for no reason at all, about my years in the service of slowly dying Augustus, the great, if dour Tiberius, and foul Livia, who held my wife and child hostage, and planned on killing the heirs of her husband. I will tell you how I escaped Livia, and became a Germani again, for a while. You will loathe me, Thumelicus, as I tell you of the Bane of Gods.

  You shall not love the story. I will be truthful and tell it all as a warning to you; so that you may keep the honorable part of your noble soul, mix it with a dose of sense, and learn to accept life will never be easy.

  You see, I had no honor, my sense was muddled, and I forgot what was important in a man’s life.

  Be that as it may, if you cross me again, I’ll hang you and find someone else to tell my story to Lif.

  Listen.

  BOOK 1: THE LABYRINTH

  “At least I don’t fear my own mother.”

  Hraban to Tiberius

  CHAPTER 1 (2 B.C., June, Rome)

  The man’s hair was curly and his face almost beautiful. His shoulders were those of a wrestler, and the only visible blemish on that face was a crooked nose. There was a hint of brutality on his crooked smile, which he generously flashed around to his fellow servants. He wore a red tunic, which was only a drop of color in a sea of gaiety. The excited Roman crowd was milling around the Rostra, and we had to strain our necks as we kept an eye on him. He might be gone as fast as he appeared, for he was not a tall man, and there were many people with red tunics watching the gladiators. I had walked past him, smelled an expensive perfume on him—likely from a lover—

  and moved on. I had walked past him a few times. Adalwulf and Wandal were near, also circling the man and his companions. He cheered the fighters, his voice demanding blood.

  “Stab the pig! For ten denarii! Stab his cock!” he yelled. His voice was thin, nervous. He had bet heavily on one of the combatants.

  Win or lose, the man we had followed had no idea his own time in Midgard might be in short supply.

  “A fine pair,” said an older man I took to be a Syrian as he tiptoed next to me, holding frantically to a bag of coins. “A rare fight!”

  He was right. The two gladiators were truly well matched.

  A thrax was circling a stubborn murmillo in the middle of the Forum of Rome, just before the Rostra. The day was hot as fresh loaves of bread, air flickering with simmering heat. The stone pines were swaying gently in the summer wind that was blowing from the west. The magnificence of the ancient temples and colorful statues was a familiar sight to us by now, as we had stayed in Rome for such a long time. The brutality of the battle before us, and the looming, inevitable death somehow did not fit the grandeur around us, but that was Rome. Everyone found the greatness and brutality an odd mix. The noble achievements and the magnificence of the great Temple of Julius and the walls of the Senate, the domes and roofs on the slopes of the hills surrounding us, the famous Rostra, the sacred Vestal Temple and Fire, the ancient Senate and the great deeds decided within meant nothing when men tried to kill each other, like any barbaric drunks might in some shitty border town at the edge of the Roman land.

  No, that was not right. The fighters were not like the Germani at all.

  There was little emotion to the fighters. A Germani would boast, growl, curse, but not these men.

  The gladiators didn’t so much as yell a challenge when they attacked, the cheers of the crowd had no visible effect on them, and both were professionally exerting all their skill and patience to survive a fight that was set to be to the end of a life. It was unusual, but this one would end with a death. Both were powerfully built, short, with plenty of mass, and muscles well used to stabbing and slashing repeatedly for hours. Their shields rang with strikes as the men tried to maneuver into an advantageous position. The short blades in their hands were deadly, brutal instruments for butchery, and the barbaric bronze helmets were gleaming wetly as sweat poured out of the eyeholes, as they panted and surged back and forth. There was blood on the sand of the Forum, but the wounds were hard to spot.

  In truth, I had no interest in them.

  I only cared for the man in the red tunic. I kept an eye on his two guards as well, who had a disconcerting habit of disappearing for moments and reappearing with food from some vendor.

  The fight went on.

  Wandal and I, and Adalwulf were looking on in our rough tunics and sanda
ls, patiently keeping our weapons hidden under our cloaks. Adalwulf was our Decurion, but we all served Livia with no true ranks. Out of necessity, we had no choice. We rarely had any other service in the Block, the fort of the Germani Guard north of Tiber, on the far side of the field of Mars. We slept there with our turma; Maximus, the new Prefect, never asked what we were up to. Our troop had special duty, often envied by the others in our turma, that was still tasked with the lives of Augustus, his family, and notables. Praetorians guarded the streets and the hills, the buildings and the Palatine, but we stayed close to the great family, and kept them alive.

  Or would, if not for Livia, and the fact she wanted to restore Tiberius to Rome and favor. She wished to avoid taking the blame for the murders of so many innocents, and the fact she used us to spy on her enemies.

  I suppose we were lucky.

  If not for the written admission by Prefect Kleitos, now dead, Livia would have had me murdered as well. And perhaps Cassia and Gervas soon after, whom she held hostages somewhere in Southern Italy.

  Our service was based on hate and necessity, but serve we did. That duty was wearing thin on our patience, and it was heavy on our souls.

  Livia.

  Livia, the snake, the madwoman who fought for her son Tiberius, though Tiberius had run away in horror after finding out the truth about his mother. That was my doing. Livia strived desperately to bring low any who would thwart the future Tiberius apparently didn’t want, to slay those who justly would inherit the power of her husband, Augustus, the man growing old.

  She lied to us.

  She told us to help her make Tiberius the new Augustus, and we would receive our families, and freedom. Livia claimed we could trust this deal. When Tiberius sat on the high seat of Rome, nothing we could do to smear her would matter, and she had no reason to kill us.

  Lie.

  I had little evidence my family even lived. They were in the south, and the family of Adalwulf followed them; Gisil, and their son.