Free The Inquest by Stephen Dando-Collins

olive skin, and grasping for his throat, Fulvus toppled onto his side. He lay, quivering on the ground, gurgling grotesquely as he drowned in his own blood.
    “So die all perverts!” cried a soldier in the forefront of the crowd, looking directly at Prefect Crispus as he spoke. Crispus, unable to watch Fulvus die, looked away.
    Martius handed the execution weapon back to its owner. “Clean it thoroughly before you sheath it, soldier,” he instructed. Then, seeing Crispus turning away, he strode to him. Grasping a handful of his yellow hair he pulled his head around, to observe the cavalryman’s death throes. “This is your punishment, Crispus. Watch your lover die!”
    Finally, Fulvus stopped moving. A soldier knelt beside the body. “He is dead,” he pronounced unemotionally. Legionaries considered auxiliaries lesser beings. An auxiliary executed for a capital crime earned no more respect than a dead animal. “What do you want us to do with the body, Tribune? Throw it out the camp gate?”
    “No, string him up on a tree beside the highway in the morning,” Martius ordered, “for all the world to see. And put a notice on the corpse: ‘DISGRACEFUL FULVUS, VETTONIAN AND PENIS SUCKER.’”
    The soldier laughed. “Yes, tribune.”
    Varro did not say anything. He turned and went back inside his tent. Martius pushed Crispus away with disgust, then followed the questor into his quarters.
    “There is only one way for these people to learn what military law and discipline are all about, Julius,” he said, as Varro slumped onto a couch. Martius could see that the questor had not enjoyed the summary execution, as much as he might support its legality.
    “I know,” Varro sighed.
    Outside, Crispus backed away from the execution site with the eyes of leering, sneering soldiers following him, then turned and hurried back to his own tent. Once inside, he sank to his knees, and began to shake uncontrollably.

VI
THE QUESTOR’S DREAM
    The Road to Beirut, Roman Province of Syria.
March, A.D. 71
    Two shaggy black goats. Billy Goats. They were old, very old. The little beards jutting from their chins were gray with age. Varro could see the ancient animals standing, looking at him, as if transfixed. From behind him, someone spoke. “Naum,” called the voice. “Naum,” it repeated, over and over again. Varro spun around to see who had spoken, but no one was there. He turned back to the goats, and watched as a shadowy figure walked up to the animals. The figure drew a sword, a Roman gladius , the legionary’s short sword, the kind with a pointed tip. And as Varro watched, in horror, the figure used the sword to gouge out the eyes of the two old goats. With that, Varro awoke, sitting up in his bed with a start.
    The questor’s personal slave Hostilis was almost instantly up from his sleeping place on the floor at the foot of the bed and standing at his master’s bedside. The slave held an oil lamp which lit his square face from below and gave him an eerie, black-eyed ghoulish appearance. “You called out, master?” said Hostilis with concern.
    “I did?”.
    “Were you perhaps dreaming, master?”
    Now Varro realized that he was bathed in a cold sweat. An image flashed into his mind, of the two blinded billy goats. The recollection caused him to he shiver, briefly, involuntarily. “Yes, yes, I remember now. It was a dream, Hostilis.”
    Another figure appeared in the doorway behind Hostilis. “Is everything in order, my lord?” It was the voice of Callidus. “I heard you emit a cry of considerable volume while I was taking the night air.” Callidus had a problem sleeping; his solution was to walk until he exhausted himself.
    “I was dreaming, Callidus,” Varro explained. “There is no need for concern. It was nothing but a dream. Go back to bed.”
    “Ah, a dream,” said the freedman, coming to stand beside the questor’s bed. Callidus placed great store in dreams, which in his opinion were much more