Etruscan Blood by AM Kirkby

  ***

  The next few days were quiet. He dreamt badly, of things with teeth that leapt from dark corners. It didn't take Tanaquil to tell him what that was about. He kept Mamarke by his side, kept the unimaginative Gnaeus around, too. There was enough to keep him busy; reports coming in from his informants on the Etruscan cities' doings, tallies of the forges' production, and now, a new problem, the logistics of feeding an army on the move, and how to get another forty wagons built that he hadn't even knew he needed.

  "Damn it! Why can't they live off the land the way we used to?"

  "With respect, Sir," Mamarke had said, "that works for a small raiding party, but not for an army this size."

  He knew that, of course; knew also, which perhaps Mamarke didn't, the classical defence against a foraging army, which was to burn the fields, and leave them starving, and that was a risk he wasn't going to take. But the wagons had to be built, and that meant taking men off some other work that was equally necessary; it was all juggling with scant resources, trying to meet one requirement while not taking too much away from others. It would have made a pleasing mathematical problem, he thought, like those Greek theories the General had shown him once, triangles drawn in circles, how to divide the circle into its own radius – if it weren't for the fact that every decision created rancour, divided winners from losers, multiplied the ranks of the discontented. It was easy to say that an army marched together; difficult to get it to happen.

  The days passed easily, hard work chasing away his demons. The reports started to get better; the spears arrived, the carts were built, and when the phalanx drilled, it had begun to look like a real army. The slingers were still a bit hit and miss, but as long as the hits outnumbered the misses, they'd do some damage, he thought, and some damage was better than none. Tarquin had buckled down to hard work at last, though he still spent his nights drinking and turned up looking sick and hungry in the morning; and Tanaquil was talking to him again. Perhaps after all his apology had been enough.

  He was no longer frightened of her, now he knew what that prophecy meant. No wonder she'd not wanted to tell him; it wasn't Tanaquil who had bestowed the kingship on him, but the gods. She had no hold on him now. If the gods had chosen him, neither she nor anyone else could threaten him; he was unassailable. That confidence began to grow in him like a seed blindly seeking out the light; he could feel it working, something new to him. (He wondered; was this the way Tarquin, Tanaquil had always felt, chosen through generations, entitled to their world in a way he never had been?)

  She in her turn seemed to sense something had changed between them. She was quieter than she had been, and the stiff and prideful bearing of a lioness had turned into the softer dignity of a cat.

  He was beginning to appreciate what kingship meant, too. How stupid of him to have seen it as a temptation to softness, as an impediment; now he saw its uses. To say do a thing, and have it done. To have no one question his experience, his knowledge, his strategy. To put out his hand and have it close on power.

  But he still hated the hangers on and the men who said yes, always yes, and called him wise and benevolent and far-seeing and so many other compliments and all of them false. So when he woke early, on a day he'd been assured was a fortunate one, and saw the sky blue and high and cloudless, and felt the immensity of the silence before the city woke to work and confusion, he decided he'd head to the Capitol to see Vulca. He had something to say to Vulca, anyway, before Vulca left, or before his army was ready, whichever was first.

  He took Mamarke with him, as he had decided that he always would, after that day he chased down the deserter Postumus. (And he'd still heard nothing from Postumus, so he'd asked Manius to take on the work; another intimate of Tanaquil's, but then, in Rome, who wasn't? Except the faithful few who kept up Faustus' strident opposition, and they would hardly work for Servius.)

  The scaffolding was still in place; early as it was, there was no sign of Vulca in the shack at the bottom of the ladder, so Servius pulled himself up to the roof. Up there, close to the ridge of the roof, he felt marooned in sky; blue all around him, a cool breeze lifting from the forum.

  There was the statue of Mnrva, ready in place, and there was Vulca, standing on the edge of its plinth, leaning into a sling he'd tied round a great beam, reaching up to dot the pupils of the goddess's eyes. Swaying out, into empty air, light as a leaf falling or a swallow scything its way over the river meadows, and raising a trembling brush to the deity's clay face.

  Then it was done; and Vulca swung himself easily back over the edge, on to the easy slant of roof, and slipped out of the rope, shaking his hair back, shrugging his shoulders a couple of times to loosen himself.

  "You're here," he said. "Wouldn't miss my putting that last touch to her, would you?"

  Actually Servius hadn't known the work was to be finished today, but he knew better than to speak.

  "I always leave this till the last moment. Till I paint the eyes, it's just a piece of clay; and now, it's alive."

  Servius smiled.

  "Silly, I know, but that's the way I feel about it."

  "Everyone has their own small rites. Soldiers do. I knew a man once had lucky knucklebones. He'd play with them while we were waiting for orders. Toss, catch, toss, catch - it drove the rest of us mad. Eventually someone stole them. A spear got him, that time."

  "Nasty way to die."

  "He didn't die. But he limped ever after. He was out of the army after that. Other men have lucky clothes; they won't change their clothes on campaign, not till they get back home."

  "You have to share a tent with them?"

  Servius laughed. That had been worse than the knucklebones.

  "I did have another reason for coming," he said. "You're done here, aren't you?"

  "I am," Vulca said.

  "Vulca, don't go back to Veii."

  "Why not?"

  "A feeling," Servius said, knowing how weak that sounded; but he couldn't say more. "A bad feeling."

  Vulca laughed.

  "I've been right a few times," Servius said.

  "Prophecy?"

  "I wouldn't claim foresight. Tanaquil did try to teach me, once."

  "You get these feelings often?"

  "Once or twice," Servius said. "And they've been right, before."

  Vulca stopped laughing. "True," he said, softly and slowly, "you wouldn't have got to be a king if you hadn't instincts you could trust. Well, I'll think about it."

  "You'll stay here?"

  "I doubt it."

  "Where will you go?"

  "To Felsina, perhaps. There's a few people heading north, you know. They don't like your census. They don't like to be counted."

  "They don't like their wealth to be counted," Servius said. "If I can count it I can take it, they reckon."

  "Or I might go south, to the Greek cities. There might not be much work for me, but I'd like to see their art."

  "You'd be out of the way of trouble," Servius said. "But don't go back to Veii."