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“Julius Caesar / And the Roman Empire / Couldn’t conquer the blue sky.”
Crowded House
“Hold my Falernian.”
Gaius Julius Caesar
Wiping his streaming eyes with his sleeve, Marcus Antonius bellowed hoarsely at Vincitatus to fly out of the clouds of smoke rising from the ruins of the Parthian stronghold. Clenching his thighs for balance and gripping tightly onto the pommel of his saddle as the dragon swooped away, he turned to look behind him. He was relieved to see that five out of six of his archers were still hooked onto Vici’s lorica hamata, short bows in their hands. The last man slumped over, a Parthian arrow in his neck. As Antonius watched, the archer next to him sawed through the dead man’s harness with his dagger, letting him drop like a stone to the ground far below. Well, being one man short didn’t matter much now, anyway. So long as nothing unexpected happened, their work here was thoroughly done.
‘Circle the walls one more time, then land on whatever high perch you can find while Caesar finishes cracking the place open,’ he called to the other four riders in his squadron, including the two firebreathers who had made reducing the fortress child’s play. It was plain that they wouldn’t have to wait long. A contubernium of legionaries had wheeled a rooved battering ram up to the gates, heaved it back and let go. It only took three blows before the gates splintered and fell back off their hinges into the dust.
‘We could just have torn the walls down,’ remarked Vici, who was busily licking her talons clean. They had found themselves a fine spot in the remains of a squat tower, from where they could watch the single legion Caesar had deemed necessary for this expedition march along the corpse-strewn main street of the fortress into an open square. Smaller squads broke off at intervals to check side streets and buildings for survivors.
‘We could,’ Antonius agreed, ‘but it’s good for the infantry to feel like they’re contributing something occasionally.
‘If they get too lazy, do you think Caesar would let us eat a few of them?’ she asked hopefully. ‘I am rather hungry.’
‘You can have a whole herd of goats after we get back to the main camp, dearest one,’ he said, stroking the warm scales of her neck. ‘Roasted with dates and drenched in honey, if you so desire.’
She made an impatient noise. ‘Perhaps. Antonius, what are they doing down there? They have brought up the ram again to that big building on the square.’
Antonius squinted. ‘Hades. The survivors must have barricaded themselves in. Come on, we’ll see if Caesar needs any help.’
With over four thousand men standing about in it, the square wasn’t large enough for Vincitatus to land without crushing a couple of centuries, so she leapt elegantly between the burnt-out rooftops and lowered her forearm halfway to the ground so that Antonius could climb down. He headed straight over to the tall, spare figure standing in the middle of a knot of officers.
‘What’re you doing down here, Antonius?’ Caesar asked, breaking off his conversation abruptly and raising an eyebrow. ‘Well. The dragons have done their job admirably. We’ll have the last of the defenders out presently and then we can see whether the priest was telling the truth.’
They had captured the magus, one of the priests of the Parthian fire cult, as he travelled the old Persian Royal Road in what he must have thought was a well-guarded caravan. Antonius smirked as he remembered the sight of the hundred or so mailed cavalrymen scrambling to get away as the Roman dragons descended on them. Many of the horses had bucked off their riders in their terror, leaving them sprawling on their backs in the dust, looking like overturned woodlice. The magus, distinguishable by his ornate robes and headdress – a conical cap with a lower section that covered the chin – had also been thrown and nearly been ripped to shreds by Vincitatus’ talons before Antonius urgently called her off. He wouldn’t have let Vici kill him anyway - commanders, priests, princes and the like might have useful information and were always taken immediately to Caesar for questioning – but there was something else unusual about the man. This close to dragons, every other Parthian – almost every non-Parthian as well, to be completely fair – tended to piss himself and collapse in a gibbering heap. The magus, on the other hand, a plump man in his mid-50s with bristling eyebrows, had calmly picked himself up, dusted off his robes and raised his hands to show he was unarmed. Antonius had absolutely no doubt that this man was somehow used to dragons, which was potentially very, very bad news.
The magus may have been dignified, but he was also thoroughly craven, and it took only the subtlest suggestion that torture might be on the table for him to spill everything he knew about Parthian operations in the local area – including the rumour that the garrison of this fortress was guarding something very precious, the personal property of King Orodes himself. He didn’t know what it was, and after he’d been handed over to the specialist interrogators of the Tenth for long enough to be sure that he really didn’t know, Caesar had decided they would just have to find out for themselves.
There was a crash as the ram’s head obliterated the double-height door of the building. Splinters and debris took their toll inside, judging by the jagged chorus of screams. Slender swords raised, a handful of Parthians staggered out, but they were shot down immediately by the legion’s auxiliary archers. At Caesar’s nodded command, one of the senior centurions led a half century of legionaries over the corpses and into the darkness.
Antonius shifted his weight from one foot to the other, listening with growing impatience to the muffled clamour of battle coming from the shattered doorway – blades striking iron and stone; the indistinct cries of men locked in desperate combat in the dark. He started to sweat and wished that he’d left his fleece-lined flying sagum on Vici’s back. He turned to Caesar. ‘Shall I take a few more men in there and see whether I can speed things up?’
Caesar raised an eyebrow like a disappointed schoolmaster. ‘I don’t think so, Antonius. You’re an excellent prefect of dragons, but you’re certainly not an infantryman. Let Crastinus do his job.’
‘But—’
‘Enough,’ Caesar snapped. ‘Go back to Vincitatus now and wait for orders.’
Antonius fully intended to carry on protesting, but the general turned his back on him to begin a conversation with an aide, so he swore under his breath instead and stalked back towards Vici, who had laid herself out on the flat roof of what must have been a vast stable block, judging by the stalls and water troughs visible through the narrow windows. The optio of the aerial archers spotted him before she did, and called out a warning to Vici.
Back in his saddle, Antonius scowled at the scene in the square. To Hades with Caesar. If he wanted to waste time and men clearing out the building, then that was fine with Antonius, but there was no need for them all to sit around all day roasting in the sun. ‘Vici, let’s get back up in the air and check for Parthian reinforcements.’
‘Is something wrong, Antonius?’ Vici asked, perceptive as ever. She was more finely attuned to his moods and emotions than any woman he’d ever been with.
He lowered his voice so that the archers couldn’t hear. ‘I’m just fed up of Caesar taking us for granted and talking to me as if I were a fluffy-chinned cadet.’
‘But he’s our general, Antonius. I still don’t understand military hierarchies particularly well, but can’t he speak to the men under his command as he likes?’
‘Juno’s arse, Vici, no he bloody well can’t! At least not to me. Without us, he’d still be back in Gaul slogging away through mud and hordes of howling, trousered barbarians. He’s just envious, because he doesn’t have a dragon of his own.’
Vici somehow arranged her reptilian features into a very human expression of confusion. ‘Couldn’t he have, though? Pacuvius and Aurora don’t get along at all, you know. Caesar could have been her companion instead if he had been there when she hatched. I wonder if it’s not too late – I could have a word with her to see if she’d be interested—’
‘No, no, you’d be wasting your time. He’s never taken an egg because he knows he’s too busy to be a dragon’s companion. You didn’t see him back in Rome – it was paperwork, paperwork, paperwork. He’d eat with one hand and sign off documents with the other. He told me himself that he knows it’d be cruel to match him with a dragon.’
‘Hmm,’ Vici agreed. ‘Poor Caesar. Shall we go aloft, then?’
‘Gods, yes, let’s get out of here.’
Vincitatus sprang upwards, launching herself far enough with her powerful thighs for her outspread wings to catch the wind and propel her high above the stronghold. Behind them, the stable block roof collapsed in on itself, sending up clouds of dust.
The stronghold had been built on a gentle rise, giving the garrison a good view over the surrounding scrubby plain, so Antonius could see almost immediately that there were no reinforcements on their way to save the beleaguered Parthians. Although he was disappointed, being up in the frigid air had instantly cleared his head, and the wind had blown away his anger at Caesar’s sharpness. Vici swooped low, practising battle manoeuvres, assuming correctly that she was free to fly as she liked until Antonius told her otherwise.
Sweet Venus, what progress they had made over the last few years. Caesar had immediately caught on to the potential of using armoured dragons in battle – how could he not, after that first battle, when Antonius and Vici had smashed into the Gauls and sent them spinning away like marbles – and reassigned the dragon-slaying units of his legions to seek out more eggs. Then he sat Antonius and a couple of the other legion commanders down and brainstormed how to use a living artillery piece to the most devastating effect. Within a year, all of Gaul was under Roman control, they had four more young dragons, and Antonius could strut around in a nicer uniform and call himself a prefect.
It was a rare army that stood its ground against the Romans these days. If one did have the guts to do so, the two fire breathers, Flamma and Ferox, were sent ahead to strafe their front ranks leaving columns of black ash in their wake, before sweeping around to the rear and taking out their archers, slingers and artillery. Meanwhile, two of the other dragons, Aurora and Taraxippos, rammed into the flanks, which couldn’t be protected by cavalry, as was customary, because no horse or camel would come within sniffing distance of a dragon. Antonius and Vici had their own special objective – to kill or, ideally, capture, the enemy commander. The dragons were devastating, leaving little for the legions to do – and, dangerously, fewer opportunities for glory, honour and promotion. Antonius hadn’t been joking about Caesar needing to manufacture opportunities for the infantry to lend a hand here and there – he’d have a mutiny on his hands otherwise.
Suddenly, Vincitatus flew so low that Antonius was worried she’d graze her belly. He shouted in alarm. ‘Vici, pull up! What’re you doing?’
‘I’ll tell you in a moment. Let me concentrate.’ Stunned, Antonius did what he was told, only turning in the saddle to shrug at the optio. ‘Antonius,’ said Vici after a few moments. ‘I can hear something.’
He scanned the horizon again. ‘What? Where?’
‘Under the ground down there.’ She pointed at a spot a hundred feet below and began circling to keep it within sight. ‘Scraping and thumping.’
‘You can hear what’s going on underground?’
‘Of course I can. Can’t you?’
‘No! Not from up here, anyway. Wait—’ His stomach twisted in excitement. ‘Hecate’s left teat. A tunnel, you suppose?’
‘Whatever or whoever it is is moving,’ said Vici, tilting her head, ‘so it would be logical to think so.’
Whatever it was the Parthians were hiding, they’d clearly had plans in place to save it from capture for a long time, which suggested it really was something marvellous. Those clever bastards. To build a secret escape tunnel stretching for perhaps a mile or more was no mean feat of engineering. But the challenge now would be to extract the fugitives – to ferret them out like rabbits in a burrow – which, without being able to see the mouth of the tunnel, would require a cunning plan. He opened his mouth to ask Vici to fly on a little way to see if they could spot a vent or a trapdoor of some kind, but she spoke first.
‘There’s a weak spot. A dip in the earth just there, you see?’
‘No?’
‘Never mind, it’s just in front of them, so we haven’t a moment to spare.’
‘Alright,’ said Antonius, still not quite clear as to what Vici intended, ‘let’s get down there.’
As always, Antonius’ stomach lurched as Vici descended and landed gently on the dusty scrub. She angled her serpentine neck to peer closely at the ground, nostrils flaring. ‘You all might want to get down,’ she growled.
There was a susurration of clicks as Antonius and the archers unclipped themselves from their harnesses and scrambled down. They watched as Vici considered a moment, then drove a single knifelike talon into the dusty soil like a seamstress wielding a needle. She cut a precise line, inserted the rest of her claws and pulled up a flap of earth the size of a cart. Shouts of alarm and pain came from the hole and Antonius noticed that one of Vici’s talons dripped with blood. He whistled in appreciation: she had targeted the Parthians perfectly. Back in the direction of the fortress, the weakened tunnel roof cracked open along its centre like old plaster. All Vici had to do was to peel back the sides. The stench of smoke and viscera came rolling up from the hole.
And there they were. Three men – there had been four, but one lay half-severed with his guts all over the tunnel floor – stood filthy and blinking in the sudden sunlight like grubs on the underside of a rock. One feebly waved his extinguished torch at them, but dropped it at the sight of the archers pointing their weapons at him. Neither of the others had had chance to draw a blade – if they even carried one. Dirty though they were, caked in a mixture of blood, soot and dust, their robes and headdresses were obviously the same as those of the captured magus. They had been dragging a sledge, which must have made their progress agonisingly slow. Strapped to it resting on a tray thickly filled with straw was a large object wrapped in a leather cover richly embroidered with designs… of dragons.
‘Sweet Venus,’ breathed Antonius in disbelief. ‘Men, carefully – carefully – lift that sledge out of the tunnel.’ He turned to the Parthian priests. ‘You three are coming back to the fortress. I suggest you don’t try to make a run for it unless you want to travel in Vincitatus’ stomach.’ The magi looked at him blankly. Realising the problem, Antonius gestured impatiently to his optio, who had picked up a smattering of Parthian. ‘Damn it. Nautianus, tell ‘em what I said.’
‘Antonius,’ said Vici softly as they waited for the archers to heave the sledge onto their shoulders and then slide it onto the ground above their heads. ‘Is that what I think it is?’
‘If it is, the general will give us your bodyweight in gold, my dearest one.’ The straps securing the object had been hastily and messily knotted, and Antonius soon gave up trying to untie them. What was good enough for Alexander the Great was good enough for him, he decided, then cut them with his sword and yanked the cover aside.
It was a dragon’s egg unlike any they had come across before, its shimmering surface a luminous scarlet smattered with lightning strikes of black and silver. Antonius reached out to place his palm on the egg. ‘It’s warm,’ he remarked, gently probing the shell with his fingertips, ‘and hard as marble.’
Vici sniffed. ‘It smells… old. And unusual. It reminds me a bit of how you sometimes smell the morning after you’ve been to a tavern or a party.’
Antonius was too intrigued to feel more than mildly insulted. ‘Like wine, you mean?’
‘Or vinegar, perhaps?’
He frowned. Vici had never described an egg like that before. Cacat. The tiniest crack had appeared. ‘I think the bastard’s hatching. We need to get Caesar here now!’
Well, there was obviously only one way to do that. Without a word, Vici launched herself into the air, leaving deep footprints in the earth. Antonius fervently hoped that Caesar would listen to her, and not mistakenly conclude from her lack of companion and complement of archers that she had turned savage.
The stronghold really wasn’t all that far away, so he could watch Vici reach the remains of the outer walls and descend into the square, where the siege of the survivors must still have been going on. Time dripped on unbearably and Antonius began to pace, one eye still on the egg. More hair-thin cracks had begun breaking out across the shell. He really didn’t want to decide what should happen if the dragonet hatched – much better to leave that to Caesar and whichever officer he brought along with him to be the little beast’s companion. Antonius tried to remember which of the younger tribunes was next in line to take on an egg, but he was struggling to concentrate, worried that the hatchling would take a liking to him – how on earth would he manage a pair of dragons? Was that even possible?
Finally, after he had counted to more than two hundred in his head, Antonius saw Vici’s dark bulk rise above the stronghold and flatten out as she extended her wings. Within moments, she had landed as close to them as safety would allow and extended a foreleg so that Caesar could step nimbly down. To Antonius’ surprise, the general was alone and had left his helmet behind, which could mean only one thing.
‘You’re taking this one on yourself?’ Antonius burst out, ignoring Caesar’s grimace at his cousin’s lack of courtesy.
Caesar didn’t answer him, his attention fully seized by the egg as soon as he laid eyes on it. Its unique appearance pleased him, Antonius could tell. The thought struck him that Caesar hadn’t been put off being a dragon’s companion by overwork after all, but that instead he’d been biding his time, waiting for something special – a beast who stood out from the others they had tamed. Well, wouldn’t that be in character? And this Parthian dragon would be something special indeed; they could all sense it.
Finally turning to Antonius, Caesar said sternly, ‘You left without orders, prefect.’
‘You made it clear that you didn’t need us, general, so we decided to use our initiative – and look how well things turned out. I hope Crastinus and his boys didn’t suffer too many casualties.’
The older man looked at him for a couple of silent heartbeats. ‘You’re fortunate that Vincitatus is so keen of hearing, Antonius. I’ll order a set of silver phalerae made to adorn her harness as a reward.’
Before Antonius could protest at the paltriness of this reward, there was a loud crack and every head turned towards the egg. Undeterred by cuffs to the head, the Persian magi began chanting some sort of prayer or greeting. The blood-coloured shell had split in several directions at once, radiating out from the spot where a draconic skull now poked through. The little dragonet was as crimson as his egg, with large black eyes and a stubby pair of horns. He kicked off the fragments of shell, growled at one that stuck doggedly to his tail, then turned around on the spot, shaking out his wings, which were streaked with silver and purple, stretching like an unswaddled infant. The little snout wrinkled and the hatchling sneezed, sending a glob of mucus onto the ground, which fizzled and smoked. Great Jupiter, thought Antonius in alarm. None of the other dragons did that. He looked at Caesar, whose mouth gaped open, his eyebrows raised on high. The dragonet blinked and then, to Antonius’ intense relief, fixed his gaze on Caesar, who quickly schooled his expression into one of fatherly warmth.
The dragonet asked Caesar a question in what sounded like Parthian. Speaking slowly and carefully, Caesar replied in the same language. He had clearly been practising, which irritated Antonius, because it added to his suspicions that the general had somehow anticipated this. One word was intelligible – ‘Praeclarus’, which must be the name Caesar had bestowed on the infant. Antonius grudgingly admitted in the privacy of his own head that it was a splendid choice, meaning ‘illustrious’ or ‘most famous’ – again, not one a man might come up with on the spot, most likely. Caesar and the dragonet exchanged a few more sentences. Well, Praeclarus would certainly have to be taught Latin before he joined the wing. Vici had picked up Greek easily enough, but Antonius didn’t know if linguistic ability was a generally something dragons possessed.
‘Praeclarus is hungry,’ Caesar announced, unnecessarily, since all new hatchlings emerged desperate for food. He was struggling to keep a broad grin under control, Antonius noticed. ‘Vincitatus will have to carry the three of us back to the stronghold so he can be fed. Your optio and his men can escort the Parthians back on foot. I’ll question them later.’
He turned back towards Praeclarus, but Antonius stopped him by laying a hand on his arm. ‘Caesar, isn’t this development worrying?’
‘More worrying for Orodes once he finds out than us, I think,’ Caesar answered evenly. ‘If Praeclarus’ egg really was his personal property, I can’t imagine there are many others in Parthian hands. The king would fear the power a dragon would give a potential rival. We already had five grown dragons and now another young one who can probably spit some sort of venom. That’s something to celebrate. Now come on, let’s get him fed before he changes his mind about us being friends.’
Antonius watched Caesar scoop up Praeclarus as if he’d been doing it all his life and, not for the first time, wondered with a sense of foreboding whether there was any limit to the gods’ love for this man.