Free Rome 4: The Art of War by M. C. Scott Page B

his throat.
    My informants had been effusive in their eulogies of the warrior-king on his milk-white Berber mare, his black hair flowing from his helmet, and the thin loop of his crown dazzling in the morning sun. A legionary of the XIIth killed him, they said: Demalion, with Pantera’s own bow.
    The story told itself anew on Pantera’s face: the shock of the death, the emptiness after, the slow climb back to normality, if his life could ever be described as normal.
    It was not my place to be kind to him. I said, ‘I need to hear you speak his name. To know you can.’
    Pantera set down his spoon. ‘Menachem. His name was Menachem ben Yehuda ben Yehuda. He made himself king in Judaea.’
    ‘He made himself king?’ I asked. ‘Or you made him?’
    ‘I helped show him how it could be done, but he was the raw material that made it possible. He was born to it. I have never met his like.’ He looked down; we both did. His finger, clearly unbidden, had sketched a horse in spilled wine on the tabletop.
    It was not a good horse. He swept it away with the heel of his hand.
    ‘Did you love him?’ I asked.
    ‘Not in the carnal sense. But I found in him a man worth following. I could have lived in his service and not felt my life wasted.’
    ‘I envy you,’ I said, and it was true.
    Panteraraised one brow. ‘I thought you had found the same in Nero?’
    ‘Nero?’ I was genuinely puzzled.
    ‘Why else does he use Seneca’s network as his plaything?’
    Now, I was horrified. ‘Do you seriously think I have taken all that Seneca built and handed it to Nero ?’
    ‘I think that Nero thinks that you have. Certainly he has made full use of all your resources this past year in Parthia and in Britain.’
    If ever I was going to strike a man, it was then. Pantera saw it; his entire body grew tense. But I am not so impulsive as that, not so caught up in the chaos of my own feelings that I would have given him the satisfaction of driving me to violence.
    Softly, with venom, I said, ‘The empire has had use of our resources; it has always been so. Nero can still be guided. Until or unless we remove him, we must offer him aid in the interest of the greater whole.’ I leaned back, still angry. ‘Why are you here? Why did you come back when you could have stayed in Judaea?’
    He shrugged. ‘Last winter, in Caesarea, we heard the news of Corbulo’s death.’
    Well yes, that was old news; nobody in Rome thought of Corbulo by then, except with faint regret for what might have been.
    Pantera said, ‘I have met his replacement. Someone who can do what Corbulo could have done, but better than he could have done it.’
    ‘Really?’ If I was cynical, I had good reason. Do you know how often I had heard that?
    ‘He’s a war-hardened general and he’s only the first generation in the senate. His brother’s a notorious sycophant, but he himself hasn’t had time to become corrupt or venal and he certainly isn’t weak.’
    ‘Vespasian?’ I laughedand that shocked him, but there was a look of discovery in his eyes, as if he had learned something new about me, and interesting.
    Drily, I said, ‘I’m the daughter of a consul and sister to a celebrated poet; of course I know Rome. I know every second son and disgraced cousin, I know their strengths and their weaknesses and how they might be bought. Certainly, I know Titus Flavius Vespasianus.’
    ‘Then you must agree that he is all that Corbulo was, and more?’
    And so I understood at last the fire in Pantera’s eyes. Losing Menachem, he had lost everything, but now he had once again found his soul’s dream: a man he could respect, a man he could follow, a man he could serve and not feel himself demeaned.
    Seneca had always told me that Pantera was looking for this, and that when he found it no one sane would stand in his way.
    But I am Jocasta, not Seneca, and I did not love Pantera; nor was I afraid of him. I did not intend to let his obsession ruin Rome.
    I said, ‘This is