Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It's a big module and the lectures are going to be held in one of the bigger classrooms; not a lecture theatre, it's not that big, but in one of long, high-ceilinged rooms under the debating chamber. This is one of the oldest parts of the university and the light streams in through lead-latticed windows, honey-coloured stone arching up overhead. There's an interactive whiteboard and disabled access and the carpets are institutionalised, not to mention the narrow plasticky desks, but next door is the "Gentleman's Cloakroom" and the stone steps are worn in the middle from the climbing of uncounted feet.

At the front stands Professor Plum, gesturing. He's a youngish man, ruddy and plump and possessed of a receding hairline; he arrived short of breath and he's short of breath now, having launched into his lecture like a lengthy jog. "... about war," he's saying, and huffs, "extraordinary conquest... a democratic city... Italy and beyond... about corruption and the seeds of downfall... but the focus of this course is on war."

He surveys the classroom. Yeah. That sounded good.

There's a young woman smiling from the middle of the room, surrounded by a blank sea of baby-faced second-years; must be a postgrad, thinks Professor Plum, and is sure he knows her from somewhere, although he can't remember her name. She's sitting in a sunbeam and her hair bleeds copper. Her smile is scarlet.

"War," says Professor Plum again, rolling the word in his mouth. There's something oddly intoxicating about it. "Expansion. Conquest. Pure, naked imperialism..."

The sun lights the girl's eyes on fire. From this angle, Professor Plum can see the spike of her heels, her legs stretching out under the narrow desk.

He huffs again. "Naked... war..."

(And War awash with sunlight remembers how much pleasure she takes in male intellectuals: how easily she devours them with a burning love for her, how helplessly they dedicate their dusty lives to her, how worshipfully they follow every flash of an ankle, every swirl of a skirt... how many boys they've given up to her alight with that same fire... how delicious they are, every one, when they fall.)

Chapter Text

A streak of sweat glistens down Professor Plum's pink face and he gestures to punctuate every sentence, his arms cupped before him. "280 B.C.," he says, and huffs. "In 280 B.C., Pyrrhus of Molossia crossed over to Italy –"

Pyrrhus...

... like wind blowing out of a burning city, the moments rush back, all smoke and glory. War leans back in her uncomfortable chair and uncrosses her legs and grins her perfect scarlet grin, and then grins wider when she sees Professor Plum swallow.

Yeah. War has her favourites. She remembers Pyrrhus.

"– three hundred tonnes of silver from Locri alone –"

How he heaped her with the wealth of southern Italy. All those rich Greek cities – all drained, all their treasures turned over to her, their sanctuaries stripped bare and the spoils laid at her feet. They had called on Pyrrhus for salvation and Pyrrhus had arrived to save them from the barbarians, their saviour-general from the homeland with his mercenaries and his elephants and War riding in his train. Her arms had shone with silver bracelets, her hands with silver rings. How Pyrrhus had loved her, worshipped her...

"– first time the Romans encountered elephants –"

Such music he had made. The river had run red, its banks churned up like freshly ploughed earth, and the horses had been screaming... all scored to the clash of the phalanxes, of spears on bright shields, yeah, and she remembers walking the field strewn with helmets reflecting the summer sun.

What had Pyrrhus said? One more victory like this... or had that been another battle? Ausculum, maybe, when he was bleeding men and money and the barbarians just kept coming, just wouldn't give up, and War had laughed and remembered how much they loved her too, these fierce Romans of hers, and how she'd overrun the rest of Italy with them while across the sea Alexander's generals tore the Hellenistic world apart.

So many battles. So many alliances broken or betrayed. Such good days.

"– back to Greece after the Battle of Malventum –"

Phalanxes breaking, and the elephants stampeding under a hail of burning arrows. They learned, the Romans, and they'd learned how to deal with elephants by now. She'd liked that about them. She'd liked their consular general too, even if he had gone on to build an aqueduct with the booty. And she'd walked the smoking fields, the southern Italian farmland that had been rich and was now ravaged by years of fighting, the cities made paupers by their mercenary saviour-general, and she'd admired her handiwork.

Good days. They did things properly then.

"– had a tile dropped on him by a woman on a roof in Argos."

She'd been there too. She'd been there and she'd seen him fall and she'd grinned as she walked away. Yeah, he'd given his life to her, and there in the Argive dust he'd spilt his life for her, but she had other toys. She'd grinned and walked away and not looked back.

Chapter Text

It's a miserable morning. Rain puddles in the roadworks and batters at the lecture hall's lead-latticed windows, not that Professor Plum knows this, since he slept in and left the lecture to a colleague with an interest in Phoenicians. He's still huddled under his covers now, eyes shut as tight as the curtains and drifting uncertainly through a dream-maze wallpapered with early drafts of his current research. Here's the odd problem student, there the odder problem colleague, all wrapped up in a slowly cohering rhubarbrhubarbrhubarb of agrarian issues and citizen birthrates and the importance of shipping and the clan of the Fabii everywhere, forerunners of the Illuminati. And through it all a thread of words, a purr unrolling into his unwoken mind like Ariadne's ball, if Ariadne had spun in bronze and sharpened her spinning so that it unravelled as one long edge...

... sure, they always were Black's favourites, but we still had a hell of a time...

Colonies and grain shipments and political dynasties. Professor Plum pursues the receding Fabii manically through a morass of marking. Claudian names echo in every corner. There's a man making speeches somewhere, old and blind and standing right in the middle of an unending road, and Professor Plum's almost disappointed that it's not paved yellow.

... went out sailing sometimes, you should've seen the Romans' faces...

The air shimmers; a police phone box appears on the Via Appia, complete with sign and blue flashing light. Professor Plum makes a sound very much like some dignified academic suppressing a very loud squee. Papers covered in spider-scrawls of unintelligible Greek homework go everywhere as he lumbers towards it –

– through it –

– stands bewildered in blue mist, that bronze purr still twining ruminatively around everything and nothing, which is to say everything.

... learned, of course, that's what comes of flat-pack ships... and then Xanthippus with his elephants, he got lucky there. Yeah. Always good for a laugh, elephants. Regulus wasn't laughing much, mind...

Fabii, thinks the disappointed Professor Plum, furiously. Not elephants, not ravens, not Spartan mercenaries or Roman consuls captured on the plains of Carthage. Agricultural land and Mediterranean trade routes and Gallic issues and maps unscrolling across acres of interactive whiteboards. Not the metal of this woman's voice, her scarlet grin stretching deep into his thinning dreams.

He squeezes his eyes more tightly shut and concentrates on amber traded through the Alps from Denmark. On safe harbours in the Adriatic. On a precise translation for fides.

... some chaps sneer at mercenary armies, but I say double the fun. Pay 'em to turn up, pay 'em to go away, hell, you'd be surprised how many people'll try not to pay 'em at all, and guess where that gets you...

Professor Plum gives up.

He opens his eyes. When he draws back the curtains, he'll discover it's still raining outside and be momentarily depressed, at least until he remembers it's autumn in the north and recovers his normal state of permanent depression. Right now, he's going to take a moment to shake off the queasiness of his uneasy dreams. That and the edges of the woman's whisper still scraping in his ear: you'll have to ask Black about the babies, mind. Too small to hit each other, they're no concern of mine...

Chapter Text

The projector's broken.

All the maps. All the slides. Italy's coast and the stepping-stone islands chaining west to east across the Adriatic and Italian black-figure pottery dug up in unlikely places. The heights of the Postojna Pass.

All the lecture. Professor Plum glares up at the malfunctioning technology. "Anyone got a brick?"

The class titters, which surprises him, because he'd meant the question seriously. He shuffles through his lecture notes again. The words SEE SLIDE jump accusingly out of innocent text. He squelches the thought of telling them all to go away and get coffee somewhere, he'll put it all online when he gets back to the office. Then he says it anyway, because sod it, what else is there to say? When they only titter again, and stare expectantly at him, he huffs and decides he'll make the best of a bad job.

He lasts thirty-five minutes, which is longer than he expected. Afterwards, he can't remember how he found himself saying, "Oh, I had a lovely slide here, full of naked people – well, that's a lie, but it could have been." Or, unwisely, because it was not a lie, "I don't know what I'm doing here, I always wanted to be a train driver anyway." He does remember the rising tide of embarrassment and anger blotting out their blank stares ("You'll need a good imagination for this one") in a surge of red.

It's not going to be a good day. Not at all.

The department's on edge and there's a manic buzz in the air. Halfway through term and the marking's piling up and everyone's sneezing, because by now the students have stirred their personal plagues good and proper into the whole cauldron of exotic germs. From his office on the ground floor, Professor Plum can hear doors slamming two storeys up and the thunder of feet hurrying down the creaking stairs. Everyone's busy and everyone's tired and tempers are breaking all over the place. Professor Plum sits at his desk and drinks his coffee and tries to forget how much he really, really wanted to hurl things at that projector. By the time he remembers the weekly seminar, he's missed lunch and is already late, so he has to make a run for it. He doesn't even notice the young woman from the morning's abortive lecture lounging by the photocopier, or manage more than a muttered apology when he brushes past a thin man coming down the shallow, uneven stairs.

(And:

"Hi," says Famine. "Long time, no see. How's it going?"

War grins her perfect grin and rolls her head slowly from side to side, while somewhere overhead a retired philosopher and ex-departmental head remembers how bloody annoying he always found his younger colleague and successor, and still does. There'll be sparks come question time; but then, with philosophers there always are.

"Pretty good," she says. "You?"

Famine sits himself on a table covered in blank cover-sheets for submitted work. "Same," he says, and returns her smile thinly. His beard is sleeker than ever. "I thought I'd take a break from business for some personal development. Hungry lot, academics, especially right now."

"Yeah," says War, thinking of Professor Plum, with his research and his articles and his humorously ruined lecture. "I guess. Hey, want to go for coffee?"

Famine considers it. "Sure," he says, "why not?")

Chapter Text

There's a handout. The title is: The Second Punic War (1). War sets her elbows on the desk and glances down the dense paragraphs while Professor Plum fusses happily with the projector, which is working this week, and the long room fills up.

A parchment vista of names and outlines splashes over the interactive whiteboard. "There," says Professor Plum, his pink face practically glowing. "What a nice map. Now I've got a bit of a sore throat today, but I'll do my best..."

... and War grins, because she shouldered through the clutter of a former colleague's office this morning and found him planning seminars on ancient medicine (the lack thereof) for a module he's been teaching longer than anyone would believe...

"... complete text of Livy for this period. Lots of good stuff – all sorts of stirring speeches and heroism on both sides –"

Yeah. Sometimes War likes a good clean fight.

"– heavily mythologised, of course. I'd advise you to read it. That's what I did, when I first started getting interested in this period. At Didcot Parkway Station waiting room, I recall."

Professor Plum is getting confidential now. He leans on the lectern, his lecture notes furled up in his plump hand. "These places have all gone downhill. Paninis. They've all got people selling paninis! Why do people talk about paninis? It's already plural! I just – I want want to punch the idiots..."

He catches War's eye. She's grinning again. He clears his throat.

"Anyway," he says, and stands self-consciously straighter. "The causes of the war..."

Always the least interesting part. War yawns and leans back and waits for Marcus Fabius Buteo to carry her to Carthage in the folds of his toga. I have war and peace here, he'd said, and whether he knew it or not, he'd lied... because she'd unfolded herself, had stepped out among the Carthaginian senators, had touched their hands, and their eyes, and their hungry mouths. Yeah, and felt the heat of their breath clouding on her bronze skin, and smiled as she remembered Hamilcar stampeding elephants into a dead-end gorge, the pulp of rebel mercenaries red underfoot.

Carthage. Always a pleasure.

She'd liked Hamilcar and she'd liked his son better. Hannibal, now, there was an artist. Anyone who'd go to the trouble of hauling a herd of unreliable, constitutionally delicate monsters over the mountains was all right by her. They did like their elephants, Carthaginians. And most of them had died en route, and he hadn't needed them anyway.

Ticinus. Trebia. Cannae. He'd done so well. She'd been really proud.

Chapter Text

Practically a full house today, which obviously surprises Professor Plum, given the weather. Most students walk everywhere, though, so it's mostly just a problem for the staff. Outside on the green, they're rebuilding the marquee for the Christmas Market, which collapsed yesterday amid bad omens. Someone is shovelling snow somewhere, the metal edge scraping rhythmically on stone.

The Second Punic War (2) stands at the top of this week's handout. War can't be bothered to check the lecture list to see if next week's going to be The Second Punic War (3). Chances are, it will. That was a good one, by any standards, and very few classically imbued scholars can resist tricola anyway.

Professor Plum is talking quinqueremes and naval numbers. They're wrong, of course, but numbers always do get screwed up in transmission. The proportions are pretty much right, at least: Romans in the lead, their ships crammed with citizens and Italian allies and even the odd freed slave in those dark days after Cannae, while Carthage scrambled for anyone who'd take money to row.

Carthaginians and their mercenaries! She'd laughed in Famine's face when he'd seen his precious merchants spilling their silver at her feet.

"The numbers told," Professor Plum is saying and War grins her perfect scarlet grin, because in her experience, numbers almost always do.

Hannibal, now.

He was good. He was very good, and she'd liked him, and she'd liked him more after Cannae. He'd ravaged Campania and plundered the countryside and ridden against Spoletium, even though she'd wanted him to have a hack at Rome. She'd smiled at him and seen bonfires reflected in his eyes. Professor Plum says, "Shades of Pyrrhus," and War thinks: yeah.

How vast she'd been in those days! She'd towered over Italy, over Spain where Gnaeus Scipio was eating Hannibal's former conquests away in bites and chunks. He'd smashed through the Carthaginians at the River Ebro and cut them off from Spain, and War had smiled at him too, because all said and done, she likes men who win and win hard. Her bronzed legs had straddled the sea and both sides had polished her boots.

"After Ebro, Carthage never tried to contest Rome for overall naval domination," Professor Plum is saying. "There's an article on last week's handout by Ed Bragg, who I used to know at Oxford – good chap –"

Good chap. Ha.

Good chaps go out to bleed in the dust and bleed other good chaps dry. The world had been full of good chaps in those days. They'd chased her and lusted after her and sometimes, just sometimes, they'd walked away...

Marcus Marcellus. Now he'd been a good chap. Yeah.

There's a picture. Professor Plum gestures happily. "There's the philosopher sketching on the ground," he says, "and he's about to get his head cut off."

He times his pause precisely, then raises his hands. "Not that I have anything against philosophers!"

What a siege that was, thinks War, and almost licks her lips. What a sack! Sure, he'd been scolded for it afterwards, but what did anyone think was going to happen? Syracuse had held out too long, and long sieges make the sacking all the bloodier. She'd waded through the pyres of burning houses and seen them carrying off the mathematician's orreries and she'd laughed, because Archimedes had built catapults for her and that made him a good chap too.

And back in Rome, they'd called in the Magna Mater, Cybele ("A baetyl," says Professor Plum, "probably a meteorite"), and sacrificed extravagantly and expiated more omens than anyone could count. "They managed to convince the rest of Italy that they could beat Hannibal," the professor's saying, "and that the gods wanted them to –"

– and War remembers Hannibal flagging and the Roman ships setting out for Carthage, and how she'd grinned when he'd had to follow them home, because by then she'd decided they were probably right.

Chapter Text

The Second Punic War (3) says the handout. Well, there's a thing, thinks War, and settles back contentedly. Might as well make the most of it while it lasts. She can see Scipio all over the page, attached to various praenomina, and the faces are coming back to her now as well. Gnaeus and Publius, the Roman mice who'd chewed up Spain while the Carthaginian cat was off in Italy, and Publius's son, who would be the elder Africanus. Now there'd been a family to watch.

And she'd watched them. Yeah.

"– time-tabling error with the third seminar group, because term ends a week on Wednesday," says Professor Plum, who's currently wasting time, her time, time that could be spent talking about her, on housekeeping details. He's looking rather puffy today and he's shorter of breath than ever. "Now this won't be a problem for all of you, but I know there are some of you who like to leave town at the first moment possible, so that you can go home and –" he huffs ominously "– brush your ponies..."

An obliging titter from the crowd – that small part of it that doesn't obviously spend all its free time in some stable somewhere, anyway. War rolls her eyes. Ponies! She remembers the glory of Carthaginian cavalry charges, thundering across Spain with Massiva and Massinissa his uncle and Syphax too, leaving the Scipiones to lust after the Numidians and the power of their horses. Hooves pounding like drums and her hair a red smear in the air, blazing the way.

How they'd slammed into the Roman infantry, hammer on anvil. Classic. Such a beautiful move.

They'd gone over to the younger Publius, in the end. She'd been glad. It wasn't that she didn't like the Carthaginians, but she liked Romans better. She'd walked through Gnaeus's blood on the battlefield and remembered him deciding with his brother to split forces and take on all three Carthaginian armies at once, and she'd had to love them then. What a family. What a people.

"– too many grammatical mistakes and not enough proofreading," says Professor Plum, who's still talking about the essays the students are getting back in their seminars. "O tempora, O mores, as Cicero would say. Do not split the infinitive, for it is sacred, and be careful with the poor apostrophe." He doesn't sound as though he thinks anything he's saying will bear fruit. "Be nice to me and you shall get your reward."

Cavalry: the Roman reward for winning in Spain, and then in Africa as well. Making new friends had paid off for the Numidian chieftain Massinissa, once the war was done and Carthage beaten, Hannibal's eighty elephants slaughtered in the dust. He'd got his kingdom, and several other people's too, and Publius Scipio had got horsemen and the name Africanus.

War liked that. Win big enough and you won your enemy's name.

"Please," Professor Plum is saying, "please, please don't refer to Rome, Carthage or any other state with a feminine pronoun!"

War liked that as well. Rome called up her armies, they used to say, and, she strove with Carthage, or, Carthage relied on mercenaries, her wealth coming from her merchants... as if war was a wrestling match between women monstrous in mural crowns, beautiful giants with idealised faces stepping out from behind their walls to trade punches. As though they hid armies in their sleeves and fleets in their foam-flecked skirts. Brave Roma calling her children to arms against Carthage and her ships, her elephants, her corrupting wealth.

That sort of idea really got a man's blood moving. And then he found himself alone and bloody on the field with War.

Chapter Text

The end of term's so close that Professor Plum can almost smell it. Just one more day. That's all. He only needs to keep going for one more day. The mantra's being chanted up and down the department right now, he knows for a fact. And then it'll be time to hash out exam papers and negotiate who'll be marking which crazy undergrad dissertations and maybe even claw back a moment or two for actual research, but at least the students will have gone and he'll be free of teaching for a whole four weeks.

Yes. Nearly there.

But first, one last lecture, on the First Macedonian War. And today he's brought his best prop, so at least the term will go out on a bang. That's just as well, because:

"Note Professor White sitting at the back," he says. "Professor White is here to carry out a peer review, which unfortunately means I cannot make the large number of rude and offensive jokes I had planned..."

The laughter's weak. Everyone's tired, even the students.

"... however, this week I managed to remember my gladius."

That perks them up a bit. Especially the redhead with the scarlet lipstick, who's sitting right in the middle of the front row today. He brandishes it proudly.

"It seems," he says, "though evidence is thin on the ground, so you're better off taking my word for it, that the Romans picked up this form of sword in Spain. I smuggled this one back from Ireland in my ironing board. Makes me wish I'd smuggled high-value drugs, or something..."

A little more laughter this time. Tom White is grinning at the back. They're warming up, thinks Professor Plum, and launches himself into the rest of the spiel: technological innovations acquired from the Spanish Celts, the shape of the gladius and its efficacy against the chainmail worn by the locals, the superiority of Celtic steel to Greek bronze or Macedonian iron. "They were terror weapons," he tells them, and has to wonder about that redheaded girl: she's sitting forwards now, intent, her lips a little parted. He can see the pink tip of her tongue. "There's good evidence that they terrified the Greeks, who were used to the wounds inflicted by spears."

And now she's nodding along and rolling her head sleekly on her shoulders like someone who's just woken up from really sweet dreams. Maybe she's done the reading ahead of the lecture. It does happen. Occasionally.

The gladius is getting heavy now. Professor Plum keeps hold of it anyway. It means he can point out Megalopolis on the map, and Corinth's citadel ("Most of my pictures of the Acrocorinth tend to be from the ground looking upwards, for the simple reason that I'm terrified of heights and nowhere near fit enough to climb up there anyway") and other places related to Rome's first war with Philip of Macedon. Besides, something about that girl's grin makes him feel he'll be better off hanging onto a weapon.

Chapter Text

War strolls up the street in the rain.

It isn’t raining much. There’s a fine, pale haze hanging mistily in the air, just heavy enough to dampen her hair and leather jacket and shining skin. The pavement’s grey and the skies are grey and the old honey-yellow stone of the buildings is darkened to a grimy shade of mustard. It’s autumn. The passersby grind dead leaf fragments beneath their winter boots.

A tangled rainbow spills into a puddle, its colours faded. War catches its tail and looks ahead and grins. The boy stands dreamily in the street outside the department, oil pooling at his feet. He comes sometimes to visit his predecessor, who isn’t going anywhere. She’s seen him drifting through the university administrative offices with reports and files and forms in triplicate flapping round him like falling leaves.

The shadow up there in Pestilence’s window must be Famine. He comes more often. He says academics are hungrier right now than they’ve ever been.

And he should know, thinks War, and grins at the newest lecturer, who’s just come bounding out of the department, all teeth and jovial charm and gleaming square glasses. It’s autumn and everything’s starting up again and the town’s woken out of its summer sleep. The man who taught the course on War has gone, disgruntled and complaining and not much missed, but that’s all right. There’ll be other courses. There’ll be other men.

“Hi,” she says. “You look like just my sort of chap.”