For The Crown and The Dragon

(c) 1994 Stephen Hunt

PROLOGUE:

Print this one out? Approx 3 pages of A4 text

Screams poured into the evening air as the crucifixions continued, a long line of wooden crosses stretching across the city parades and into the gentle hills beyond. Creon's gaze shifted upwards towards Rome's sky, a flight of geese silhouetted against the blood-stained sun. Blood red, an appropriate augury.

Creon was joined on the palace balcony by the Emperor's Visigoth General. Another mercenary of course, most of the legion's officer class having fled months ago to swell the ranks of the Emperor's rival. A truly vicious scar ran down the General's face, as if his head had been split in half, then somehow joined back together again by force of will alone.
 "Does the sight remind you of your god perhaps, Greek?" Kahr asked.
 "They had run out of crosses by the time they got to him," Creon said. "And he isn't our god."
 Kahr touched his wolf pelt cloak, a superstitious gesture. "Child of, then. Perhaps in another three-hundred years, one of those men will also be proclaimed holy by some priest. You like thinking don't you, do you think that is likely?"
 Creon knew his religion held a strange fascination for the tree-worshipping tribes. That vision of a man dying nailed to a lebanese oak had proved a powerful image for Kahr's people.
 "Another three-hundred years. You are an optimist, what makes you think we have that long left now?"

Reinforcing the Greek's words, a set of manic cries echoed from within the palace behind them. A tortured high pitched sound, and unlike the columns of crucified turncoat legionnaires outside, a pain that was completely self inflicted.
 "The Emperor has at last heard, I think, that our rebellious friend Licinius is advancing on the capital," Creon noted.

"You see beyond the river?" Kahr pointed to the hills. "The smoke? His troops are burning the estates. Your good man is no longer in control of his army. Licinius called my people savages, but we never fired our own tribe's villages. My scouts tell me over half his army is composed of the ex-legion's demisapi. Beasts. How can you expect to control beasts? They should have banished every last one of them into the wilderness after the slaves' uprising."

"There's still time," Creon pleaded. "You have control of the garrison here, take Maximinus Daias's head and offer it to Licinius. Give Licinius Rome. You can stop the civil war, finish it before the Emperors destroy everything."

The Visigoth General shook his head. "You are a fool, Creon. The Caesar is paranoid, he's always surrounded by his guard of demisapi; those monsters would rip anything apart that tried to touch a hair of their precious master. Besides, your rebel friend Licinius will try to slaughter my people whether we run or stay, surrender or fight. Let him bring the Empire down, Donner, what do you care?

"They used daemonry to crush Athens and enslave your people. How can you care for Rome? They have twisted the world into an abomination with their enchantments and sorceries, weirded animals and the forests into horrors. Let Rome fight to a standstill and rip herself apart like a wounded animal, then my tribes will come as free men. We will come to remind them there are some things silver still cannot purchase!"

 "You have not joined with a tutor," Creon said. "You can not understand what the Emperor is going to do, the raw power he has under his control. Even Maximinus Daias does not understand the toys he's been left to play with. We should never have let another Emperor into Rome without undergoing the rites."

 Kahr laughed at this, but it was not a happy sound. "Caesar may be as crazy as a leper, but there are some things even he won't sleep with. Your daemon's three years gone now, and its prohibitions with it. If you still adhere to its teachings, you get your savants to stop Caesar, let them try and say no to the Emperor - we'll be hammering up your body in the Citizen's Way before nightfall."

 "You think I fear him?" Creon said, a trace of anger infecting his normally calm voice. "If I could bring him down, I would do it in a second. But you know it would mean nothing. The brotherhood has been shattered into pieces by Vulcanus's departure: the Emperor's found no shortage of lapdogs from within our ranks to help him. I have already told my party not to assist Maximinus, but over half of them are partisan for one of the Emperors. I can't even control my people anymore, let alone the other parties."

 "Not so loudly, Greek," Kahr said. "Caesar's mood will not be visibly improved if he overhears your view on his reign. He thinks he is a god now, and very shortly I expect he will discover he is all too mortal. That is not an easy thing for a god to do, and it won't be easy on those around him either."

"We are all dead men today, General," Creon answered.
 "Come with me then," Kahr said. "I do not intend to be caught here when Licinius's rebel legions fall upon the city. My men control the east gate, you can slip out with us tomorrow, leave Rome to her insanity. By the time we escape, Caesar's demisapi will be far too busy to chase a cohort of foreign deserters."
 Creon shook his head. "No. We should have stopped this a long time ago. I will call the Senate together and hope enough savants answer the call to council to put a stop to this madness."
 "Tread carefully, Greek," Kahr growled. "As you said, your people have splintered into many factions."

Pinched and tired eyes looked at Kahr as he stood in the shadow of a temple on the city outskirts. His centurions had gathered slowly around him, many wearing common armour so the unscheduled concentration of officers would not be noticed.
 "You know what to do," he explained. "Fall back towards Natiaum in unit and avoid contact with any other legion. If you run into loyalist forces this side of Atiati, tell them Maximinus Daias has heard the rebels have split their forces to flank Rome, and you've been sent to harass his rear. The Emperor's crazy enough to send troops like so."

That drew a bitter laugh from the General's ragtag legion, hired killers who'd had their fill of Rome's inhumanities, of household pets being appointed to the Senate, beasts being raised into races of slavering half-men, sorceries and bewitchments that could shock a normal person insane with their world speeding through change after change.

Far to the south, a series of hollow concussions cracked the air, dust from the baked ground which surrounded the city filtering up into the wind.
 "Damn, but they're close," said a soldier.
 "When you have travelled far enough north of the central provinces, we'll meet up in the border forests, then back to our villages before autumn settles," Kahr went on. "Let whoever wins here choke on their victory."
 "But the forests have been weirded," a legionnaire protested. "There is no living to be had there now. If our villages are even standing where they were it will be a miracle."

The General's scar seemed to draw his upper lip into a sneer, making the man's face appear even crueler. "You have spent too long living soft in Rome, boy. We are still part of the order, the World-Tree will draw us under the cover of her branches. Froh and Wotan will not forget our people, not in this moment."
 Abashed, the legionnaire dropped his gaze. There was no challenge to the General and his party as they left through Rome's east gate.

Kahr stood under the massive arch a moment, looking to the sky. A thin vapour trail marked the passage of a solitary flight of the Emperor's Aviatis; Kahr had heard that they were having difficulty getting them to work now. First another tutor would start to decompose and grind to a stop, then one more savant would disappear in the war, or be lost as prefects jostled for the ever-dwindling supply of luxuries.  

Everything was breaking down. Rome had built her glory out of a house of cards, and now their Daemon Prince had fled, what little was left of the natural order was reverting. Vulcanus's passage had provided the gust of wind that would bring it all down.

That fact gave the Hunnic warlord some small grain of satisfaction to hold onto. The Caesars had partied with dark forces and had obviously become twisted in the process, extending their corruption across the globe, ruling through a potent mixture of fear, force and the supernatural.

Natural vengeance, retribution in the form of Wotan's will was destined to strike back in the end, and he would tell his grandchildren he had been there at the end to see it.
 Pushing their way through swarms of broken retreating maniples and confused refugees, the Visigoth mercenaries headed away from the Imperial capital. As if reminding them of the Emperor's reach, demisapi soldiers hammered away under the burning morning sun - the line of crosses reaching, it was rumoured, as far north as Dianis.

Kahr stopped under the irritating clouds of dust, unslinging his waterbag and walking quickly towards the orchard of crosses off the road.
 One of the demisapi standing at the grass's edge moved to intercept Kahr, the origins of its breeding obviously canine.

The Visigoth officer was reminded of the wolves that had terrified him as a boy. Grey shadows darting through the shadow of the trees at dusk, shivering under his rough wool blanket while the pack scratched around his mother's fence, four-legged killers made bold by the winter desolation.

"No water," it growled. "Traitors."
 "Get out of my way," Kahr snarled back. "Move, or I'll break your filthy back."
 Sweeping up its pilum the creature stepped back, menacing Kahr with its barrel. "No water. Orders."
 Kahr slapped the gold eagle holding his short crimson cloak to his breastplate. "Orders is it now! Can't you recognise an officer when you have one in front of you? Step out my bastard way or I'll see your brothers have your rotting carcass nailed up along with these."
 "Orders," the beastman sulked, moving aside to let the General reach the field of crosses.
Kahr grabbed hold of one of the wooden cross-pieces and pulled it at an angle so he could reach its occupier.
 Greedily the crucified prisoner lapped at the water dribbling from Kahr's drinking skin.

"No crown - of - thorns for - me?" husked Creon.
 "Where would I get those from at this time of year?" the general said. "You should have listened to me, Greek. I take it your people didn't live up to your expectations?"
 Creon coughed up blood as the liquid hit his stomach. "So - stupid. It's over - for - civilisation. Why? So much - pain."
 "Rome was a sickness." Kahr looked at Creon's sweating face, convulsed in agony. "Do you want to hold a sword?"
 Creon gasped, almost laughed. "No - no - sword. Never lived by - that."
 Kahr nodded then hugged Creon and slid his blade into the man's heart, the bearded Greek arching once on the cross then falling slack.
 "He's killed, killed," the beastman whined accusingly behind its officer.
 Kahr brutally pushed the creature out of his way. "Haven't you heard, legionnaire? We are all dead men today."

 Six days later, the world shattered.

 

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