Authors: Mark Henrikson
Valnor remained reclined
in his litter as the four servants carrying the conveyance on their shoulders lowered the contraption to rest on the paved ground. Once all the jostling subsided, Valnor separated the purple curtains on his right side, stepped out and rose to his full height.
His flesh rippled wi
th goose bumps as a blast of winter air made the folds of his toga flap in the breeze. He was instantly reminded how silly the fashion of high Roman society really was. The temperature was near freezing, and yet prudence dictated he walk about in public wearing nothing but a bed sheet to keep the bite of winter at bay.
When Valnor’s eyes focused on the bath house standing
before him, a temporary sensation of warmth danced up his spine. The building featured six sets of columns rising sixty feet to support a rectangular pitched roof over the grand reception hall. Behind that sloping roof line Valnor saw a series of circular domes ringing the central open air pool. Each of the domes had plumes of steam rising from vents cut in the ceilings as hot air heating the chambers and pools escaped into the cold winter air.
Valnor longed to get into those rooms as fast as possible, but
a few social protocols had to be met before that could happen. First, he needed to wash in the frigid waters of the massive open air pool to remove the dirt and grime of everyday life before moving on to the warm waters and sweat rooms.
Valnor walked into the reception hall and bid several senators and wealth
y patrons strewn about polite nods as he strolled past the dozens of reclining sofas arranged around roaring fire pits. The looks he received along the way invited him to join their conversations, but Valnor had no intention of lingering anywhere other than the hot water baths.
Past the reception hall was
a mind bogglingly large rectangular open air pool spanning one hundred feet across and three hundred feet long with twelve half-moon shaped alcoves with doors in the middle of them lining each side. Steam billowed out from underneath those doors as the wooden fixtures tried to retain the heat within the rooms they guarded. Valnor could almost feel the warm embrace of those chambers, but first he needed to torture himself.
Scattered throughout the chest
deep waters of the open air pool were clusters of anywhere from five to fifty men talking while they bathed. The bath house was the one place where one’s station in society did not matter. Any citizen was welcome in the baths, from the lowliest freedman to the highest ranking senators. No togas, or pins of office were worn in the waters. Every man was equal and had a right to talk to the other.
A
slave helped Valnor unwind from his toga until he stood at the steps of the frigid pool wearing nothing but a smile. He would have preferred jumping into the waters all at once to get the shock over with but that was not how things were done, especially for the young man holding the reins of the entire Republic. All eyes were on him as he slowly descended into the waters to see if he would let out any visible signs that the 45 degree water bothered him. Of course it bothered him, it bothered everyone, but this was one of many subtle ways a man’s strength of character was proven.
Valnor put his right foot into the water and the violent embrace of ice cold water nearly compelled a reflex
to pull his foot back out immediately and run screaming for the heated chambers. Valnor pushed the urge aside and forced his left foot into the waters. He casually descended two steps so the icy line marking his warm flesh above water and the freezing flesh below rested at mid thigh. He, and everyone in the bath house knew the next step was the man maker.
He let out a long exhale to make sure there was not enough air in his lungs to let out a yelp, and then stepped down bringing the water level past his genitals, which were now retracted
and might never be found again.
Valnor
quickly descended the remaining two steps to bring the water level up to his nipples, which were hard enough to cut diamonds at the moment. Every atom in his body demanded he take no more than ten seconds to wash, and then head for the heated chambers, but he had social obligations to meet. Tragically, he was expected to make brief social visits to each discussion group and then exit from the waters on the far side; a very long three hundred feet away.
Valnor dove for
ward to simultaneously plunge his head under for the cleansing effect and to bring him that much closer to the first discussion group. When he surfaced again, Valnor took a few easy swimming strokes to bring him next to the nearest cluster of fifteen men. While Valnor clinched his jaw to suppress the chattering sound of his teeth, he evaluated if he knew any of the men. Thankfully none were familiar to him so the discussion would be brief, a few handshakes, a joke or two, and he was on to the next group, and that much closer to warmth again.
“. . . I heard he’
s even dressing like them now,” a slender man in the discussion group was saying when he noticed Valnor’s approach which abruptly ended the conversation to acknowledge the honored guest. Technically all men there were equal in the pool, but everyone waited for Valnor to break the silence.
“
I must say, there are many things I miss about the spring and summer time, but the warming effect on this pool definitely tops the list,” Valnor said with a forced smile.
“Here, here,” the men all confirmed.
“Perhaps we should all pay the temple of Sol a visit and offer sacrifices and prayers that the god may speed along the return of warmer weather,” the slender man added. “It would be time and money well spent.”
Valnor shook a few hands as he returned the
banter, “Ah, but if we didn’t occasionally endure bad weather, would we truly appreciate the good?”
“
Politicians always find the bright side of any situation,” a chubby man on the far side of the conversation circle said with a laugh.
Some of the men let loose an uneasy laughter while others
didn’t make a sound as they looked at Valnor to see how he’d react. The comment could be taken as an insult or a joke and they waited to see which was the case.
The chubby man was not worth the effort of a confrontation so Valnor
casually moved across the middle of the discussion circle to show there were no hard feelings. He shook the man’s hand and clapped him on the shoulder with his free hand.
“Indeed,” Valnor said. He
then turned to address the men as he walked backwards toward the next cluster of men. “I’ll leave you gentlemen to your prior discussion. Good day.”
Valnor moved on to the next cluster
of men with much haste since his legs were already going numb from the extreme cold enveloping them. One visit was down, but six more loomed before Valnor could excuse himself and seek comfort in the warm waters of the hot rooms. As he approached the next group of five men he overheard the conversation and instantly slowed his approach to maximize his eavesdropping opportunity.
“The man who captains my merchant ship just returned from Egypt. He said he saw Mark Antony with make
-up on his cheeks and black charcoal coloring around his eyes. I tell you, the man has gone native, forsaking his Roman heritage completely,” a blond haired citizen said.
One of the men noticed Valnor’s approach. To tip his friend off to shut his mouth, the man cleared his throat and nodded toward the new arrival. “Good day to you
, Consul Octavian.”
“And to you fine citizens,” Valnor responded as though he had not heard a thing.
The blonde haired man must have known his words were heard. Rather than looking like a coward in front of his peers, he chose to engage Valnor in the matter. “There are rumors that Mark Antony has re-established himself in Egypt through a partnership with that desert witch. Does another civil war loom in the not too distant future for us, Consul?”
Valnor took the time to look each man in the eye to get a read of their feelings on the matter. The relaxed lines around their eyes told him they were not angry at Valnor for his
part in the troubles, but they were concerned about the disruption any further conflicts would have on their lives.
“You,
I, and every citizen in the Republic are sick and tired of the infighting,” Valnor said. “If an external nation threatens our Republic I will fight them with vigor, but no more conflicts will take place under my watch between fellow citizens. You have my word on that.”
The discussion took an immediate turn to the lighter side, and Valnor soon found an exit point
to move on. Four more visits quickly came and went without incident. Valnor’s entire body from the neck down had long since gone to sleep on him. Somehow his mind was still able to propel his limbs forward toward the final group of citizens.
Valnor could almost feel the warm embrace of the hot rooms. A surge of unexpected excitement rushed through him as three of the four men
before him got out and headed for the closest sweat room door. One last man to make small talk with and his torture was over.
“Good day citizen,” Valnor said while extending his right hand toward the man he approached. “I see I’m catching you on your way out of the pool. I won’t keep you then.”
The citizen looked straight through Valnor with purpose and confidence behind his eyes. He met Valnor’s hand and the men clasped each other’s forearms in a stiff handshake. “It’s about time you made it over here. I’ve been freezing my minerals off in this pool all morning to catch you alone.”
An inst
ant injection of adrenaline to his veins put Valnor on edge. Was this man an assassin? Both of them were completely naked under the water, but there were still places for a clever killer to hide a weapon. Valnor stole a glance around to see if anyone could help, but no one was nearby. If this man was an assassin he was dead in the water - as it were.
“You must have
urgent business in order to put yourself through that,” Valnor said with a slight waver in his words.
The stranger held firm the handshake as he looked up toward the overcast sky. “I miss the warmth and sunshine back in Egypt.”
That was it, there was no doubt in Valnor’s mind this man was an assassin sent by Tomal to kill him. Before he could attempt to wrench his arm free from the man’s grasp, the stranger whipped his other arm out of the water toward Valnor’s neck. The movement was so fast and sudden, Valnor didn’t even have time to duck.
Instead
of feeling the bite of cold metal dig into his neck, Valnor felt the arm wrap around his shoulder and across his back which brought them into a tight one armed embrace. The two were so close that the stranger’s lips were pressed right against Valnor’s ear.
“But I missed the company of my helmsman even more,” the stranger whispered.
Valnor pushed the man back to have a closer look. The face was not the least bit familiar to him, but the eyes, the eyes gave him away.
Valnor released the handshake and wrapped the man in a full two armed bear hug. “Captain Hastelloy you have no idea how good it is to see you again.”
“If that’s the case, I take it you’ve forgiven me for the distasteful orders I had you follow earlier?” Hastelloy asked.
“You may, as long as
you’ve forgiven me for a certain spear throwing incident a few months back,” Valnor countered with a playful smile.
“We both had our parts to play to get Tomal and his Alpha
influencer away from power,” Hastelloy answered. “As long as we can all come back together again in the end, this will all have been for the greater good. Now here we are, you and I back together so we’re halfway there.”
“Who are you anyway?” Valnor asked
.
“I go by General Agrippa
,” Hastelloy said with a cheeky grin and slight nod forward. “I gave myself a promotion for this life cycle.”
“General?” Valnor a
sked, “Of what army?”
“Yours,” Hastelloy responded
as he gestured for the two of them to continue the conversation in the hot rooms.
When Valnor ascended
the steps leading out of the frigid waters, he became acutely aware just how cold his skin temperature had become. The forty foot long crimson banners hanging between the alcoves were flapping frantically in the wind, yet Valnor felt nothing; his nerve endings were in shock. He couldn’t feel anything below his neck, but he still had to make it to the closest door which was a daunting thirty feet away. His leg movements were based entirely on muscle memory and the motion gave a strange sensation of his head floating away from the rest of his body. Despite the difficulty, Valnor managed to cover the distance and came to a stop just outside the door leading to the salvation of heated rooms and warmed pools.
Hastelloy reached th
e door first and pulled it open allowing a wall of steam to billow out and provide a curtain of white haze for them to enter through. Valnor stepped through and Hastelloy quickly followed. He stood motionless for a moment, enjoying the warming sensation that tickled every millimeter of his skin. The bottoms of his feet warmed the quickest as the hot air running under the floor warmed the stones on which he stood.
“Consul Octavian. Would you and your
companion care to join us?” a voice called from a circular pool measuring fifteen feet across. The voice was that of Senator Cicero. He was sitting in the hot water pool along with a dozen other Senators of similar political persuasion.
“In a moment,” Valnor said as he closed his eyes and leaned his back against the
nearest stone wall. “This is my favorite part.”
The hot air not only ran
under the floors, it also coursed through the walls. The warm stones caressed the back half of Valnor’s body and induced a wave of pleasure that was only rivaled by a sexual climax. “Ah, now that is why I continue coming here during the winter months.”
The s
ensation slowly passed and Valnor pulled away from the heavenly touch of the wall and stepped into the waters of the sitting pool. Contrary to his experience with the wall, touching the searing hot water was another round of torture. The contrast between hot water and cold flesh was too much. Valnor felt like his flesh instantly burst into flames.
Fighting th
rough the pain, Valnor took a seat in the water so that only his head and neck remained above the surface. Hastelloy did likewise and sat down next to Valnor for what was certain to be an intriguing conversation.
“We were just discussing
the likelihood of further hostilities with Mark Antony,” Cicero began. “I have word he’s allied himself with Queen Cleopatra.”
“Yes,” Valnor acknowledged. He then gestured toward Hastelloy. “General Agrippa was just informing me of his findings from the recent
intelligence gathering visit he paid to that region. I think we’ll all benefit from hearing the report.”
“General, please tell us. Is there any truth to the rumors that Mark Antony has forsaken his Roman birth and gone
native?” Cicero asked.
“
Yes, Senator,” Hastelloy answered in short order. “I can attest that every word of the rumors is true. Mark Antony parades himself throughout Alexandria wearing native skirts and jewelry while painting his face and eyes with makeup. He looks more effeminate than even the Greeks.”
“Where is the man’s dignity?” Cicero asked of no one in particular.
“I’m afraid Mark Antony going native is not the only issue,” Hastelloy continued. “As you suggested, Senator, Antony and Cleopatra have formed an alliance, and it is not just a paper arrangement. They’re fully committed partners bent on undermining the authority of Rome.
“Cleopatra financed the establishment of an army for Antony
to command, which he recently used to successfully invade Armenia, just outside the eastern edge of the Republic. I was personally in Alexandria when he returned and slapped Roman tradition square in the face by throwing himself a Triumph celebration in that heathen city rather than the Roman capital.”
“
That’s certainly in bad taste, especially for such a minor conquest” Valnor said, “But I fail to see how it undermines Roman authority.”
“By itself i
t doesn’t, but the proclamations he made during the celebration were a definitive challenge to the pre-eminence of Rome and her authority over Egypt and the entire eastern territories,” Hastelloy countered. “Mark Antony had the nerve to declare Caesarion, the bastard son between Caesar and Cleopatra, to be the King of Kings and the King of Egypt.”
A low rumble of displeasure grew from the circle of senators. Hastelloy increased the volume and intensity of his voice to carry over the din and accentuate his point. “If
assuming to have the authority to divvy out Roman territory was not enough, Antony’s final act of subterfuge was to declare the bastard child legitimate.”
At that moment everything stopped. Hastelloy’s voice fell silent, the side conversations, and even the soft sloshing
of water about the pool ceased; giving credence to the magnitude of the words just spoken.
“I see the implication
of this is not lost on any of you,” Hastelloy finally added with a level tone that demanded everyone’s undivided attention. “Caesarion has a direct blood line to Julius Caesar, which supersedes the adopted relationship of Octavian. If Antony presses this claim, which we all know he will, Caesar’s name, fortune, and the loyalty of his former legions could all be in jeopardy.”
“Not to mention Antony’s ally C
leopatra,” Valnor added. “She’s one of the wealthiest people in the world, thanks to the grain shipments our Republic imports from Egypt. If that food source is cut off, famine and insurrection will soon follow.”
“That cunning bastard,” Cicero vented. “How many times does that maniac need to rise and fall from power before he stays put down?”
“At least once more it would seem,” Hastelloy answered.
“The Republic is in no position to wage yet another civil war,”
Cicero protested. “The people are sick and tired of sending their husbands and sons off to war for years on end and then return to a broken society where the most recent victor imposes his will on the people.
“The citizens want p
eace and consistency damnit,” Cicero shouted. “They won’t support another war against our own. Like it or not, Antony is a Roman and the will to fight him is no longer there.”
A contemplative silence hung over the conversation until Valnor finally spoke again.
“Why does this have to be about Antony? It’s Cleopatra’s private army. Her son is trying to annex a Roman province by declaring himself king. When the citizens learn how vulnerable our food supply is to this rebellious territory they will insist on decisive action. We won’t have to convince them of anything; they will demand action from us.”
“The people aren’t just going to take our word for it, or even the rumors floating about. They’re going to want proof,” Cicero countered.
“Proof,” Hastelloy interrupted as he glanced Valnor’s direction with a sly grin on his lips and a sinister twinkle in his eyes, “Lies in the vaults of the Vestal Virgins. Mark Antony’s last will and testament is filed there, and I have it on good authority an amendment was recently added to the document.”
Valnor’s eyes widened
as the scope of Hastelloy’s plan came into focus for him. The populace would unite once more to conclusively remove the threat Tomal and his Alpha controller posed, and that was good. The masterful stroke came by finding a way to involve the Vestals and their temple.
The Vestal Virgins unwittingly protected one of
the Alpha relics believing it to be the physical presence of their goddess. Since the moment Hastelloy discovered the relic’s existence, the Alpha engineer had turned the Vestal temple into an impenetrable fortress. The temple was further protected by public laws requiring death to anyone who violated the temple grounds, as well as the promised wrath from Vesta herself in the afterlife.
Try as he may,
Valnor couldn’t come up with a scheme to destroy the Alpha relic held in the Vestal temple. It was infuriating knowing he controlled the entire Roman Republic, yet he couldn’t accomplish his only true goal of destroying an object that resided just a few short miles away from his base of power.
Common thieve
s and even skilled agents wouldn’t go near the temple no matter how much coin was offered. Valnor himself wasn’t skilled enough to sneak into the place, which left him with the completely unacceptable option of mounting a full military assault on the compound. The vestals were universally revered and protected by the citizens, openly attacking them was a non-starter. His soldiers wouldn’t do it, and even if they did, the act of desecration would incite a full blown rebellion.
This forced Valnor to conclud
e there was no realistic way to get at the relic, yet Hastelloy, with what appeared to be a mere afterthought of his tactical abilities, found the way in.
“The citizens w
ill never allow their government to violate the sanctity of the Temple of Vesta,” Cicero said with anger and alarm. “They’ll take to the streets to defend the vestals and hunt us down for violating them. They’d treat the offense as if we raped their wives or daughters before their eyes.”
“
It’ll all be over before anyone knows it happened,” Valnor said with a frosty edge to his words that dropped the temperature of the room a few degrees. “Then we’ll present our findings and let the people decide which gives greater offense: violating the Vestals or Mark Antony’s going native and trying to starve the people in order to establish a private kingdom fashioned from Roman territory? I will have proof so the people will see that the distasteful ends did indeed justify the means.”
The room erupted in heated words and debate about the
proposed actions. Enough of the voices were in favor that Valnor felt free to divert his attention for a few moments.
Valnor leaned over to Hastelloy for a private word.
“Are you sure we’ll find what you think we’ll find in that amendment housed in the Vestal vaults?”
“I ought to
considering I authored the document and put it there,” Hastelloy replied under his breath causing Valnor to suppress a good, hard laugh. The man was a master, pure and simple.