The Sign of The Blood Read online

  The Sign of The Blood

  Laurence O'Bryan

  Copyright © 2018 Laurence O’Bryan

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, write to the publisher at the address below.

  Ardua Publishing

  5 Dame Lane,

  Dublin 2,

  Ireland

  http://arduapublishing.com

  Ordering Information: Contact the publisher.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or long dead, is entirely deliberate.

  Acknowledgements

  I’d like to thank my editors, Alex McGilvery, Sheryl Lee, Helen Pryke & Catriona Troth, and beta readers, Tanja Slijepčević, Robin Levin, Cheryl Carpinello, Roy Hunt, JJ Toner & Kelly Lenihan. All remaining errors are mine. Special thanks also to all BooksGoSocial supporters and my wife, Zeynep, and my children, who’ve had a lot to put up with.

  Historical Background

  The novel takes place between the years 297 A.D. and 306 A.D. The Roman Empire had numerous emperors in the preceding century and had recently entered a system of rule with four emperors, two in the west and two in the east. Below are the real historical figures we encounter in this fictional retelling of a crucial period in world history, when Christianity took a major step in its journey from being a marginal and persecuted religion to becoming the most powerful religion in the Roman Empire.

  The Emperor Galerius was the junior emperor in the east at this time. As we first encounter him, he has been tasked with the defeat of the Sasanians, the last Persian Empire before the rise of Islam.

  The Emperor Chlorus was the senior emperor in the west. He had given his son, Constantine, as a hostage to the eastern emperor, as was common practice at that time, as a sign of commitment to their power sharing agreement.

  Constantine, later to become Constantine the Great, was a young man of twenty-five in 297 A.D. He was an officer in Galerius’ campaign, learning the arts of war.

  Helena, his mother, had separated from Constantine’s father, the Emperor Chlorus. He needed to marry a more suitable wife for someone rising fast in Roman politics.

  Theodora, a Roman aristocrat, and the Emperor Chlorus’ new wife.

  Juliana, a fictional character I created to help tell the story of Constantine’s rapid rise to power.

  Place Names Used At The Time (297-306 A.D.)

  Bithynia - A Roman province in what is now western Turkey.

  Britannia - A Roman province now comprising England & Wales.

  Caledonia - Much of Scotland, outside of Roman control.

  Eboracum - The Roman city, now York, in the north of Britannia.

  Gaul - A Roman province, now largely France.

  Germania - Germany, most of which was outside the empire.

  Gesoriacum - The Roman port town, now Boulogne, in northern Gaul.

  Italia - Italy, the home province of the Roman Empire.

  Lindum - The Roman city, now Lincoln, in central Britannia.

  Londinium - The Roman city, now London in southern Britannia.

  Massilia - The Roman port city, now Marseilles, in southern Gaul.

  Moesia - A Roman province, including most of modern Serbia.

  Nicomedia - The Roman city, capital of the Eastern Roman Empire at the time, now the city of Izmit in Turkey, on the Sea of Marmara.

  Palandoken - Mountains in the area between modern Turkey, Iran and Armenia.

  Treveris - The Roman city, now Trier, in western Germany, on the River Moselle, inside the Roman Empire, capital of the western Roman Empire at that time.

  “Praise be to the Lord my Rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle.”

  Psalm 144:1.

  Prologue

  The Roman City of Eboracum (York) - Northern Britannia, 306 A.D.

  The slave girl raised her arms, spread them like an eagle about to take flight, then leaned toward him. Blue feather-tattoos covered her skin. Her eyes were rimmed with silver. She shook her soot black hair. Curls flickered in the light from the oil lamps.

  The Emperor Constantius Chlorus waved her forward. “Are they all like you beyond Hadrian’s Wall?”

  She shook her head, bared her teeth. One on each side had been sharpened so she could suck blood from the necks of her enemies or from animals downed in a hunt.

  A low and pleasant hum warmed his blood. This one had a spark in her, not like the other beaten curs they’d sent to his rooms every other time he’d been to Eboracum.

  “Come here.”

  She moved toward him. With her large white breasts and long legs, she looked like the fresco of a painted savage he’d seen once in Rome.

  He hardened fast, cupped one breast in his hand, then the other. The erect tips had flecks of blue on them. He pulled her to him. They tasted sweet.

  He closed his eyes as she lowered herself on top of him.

  “What do your people say about me?” he asked, when he was finished, and she was moving away from him, crawling backwards toward the door.

  She stopped, leaned up, placed her hands together, as if in prayer.

  “You will die before the moon rises.”

  I

  Lower Armenia, 297 A.D., Nine Years Before.

  Juliana had been warned often enough. “Beyond the Wolfe’s Teeth Mountains lies the daemon world.”

  They’d been right too. Every half-dazed step confirmed it, as did her dreams filled with blood-smeared faces and strangled screams. And every morning when she woke it was to the knowledge that what had happened was even worse than all those dreams, and that her only hope was that some of them had survived, a friend, a cousin, her mother.

  She shaded her eyes from the burning sun. A line of dust-streaked cavalry rode about an arrow's flight away on her right. Sun-whitened grass faded into the horizon beyond. Hot air eddied above it all, as if the land itself boiled.

  An executioner's call rang out. Her ten-year-old body shook. An intake of breath passed along the line of shuffling captives.

  “Look up, runts, children of our enemies! See how those who displease us find the end to their days.”

  The executioner threw a severed head toward the prisoners. The mouth gaped wide. Blood dripped from where the neck should have been. The head tumbled onto the grass near her, its blank eyes accusing.

  She stared again at the bare back of the prisoner in front of her, willing herself not to care, pressing her hands into dusty fists. Glimpses of mutilated soldiers, one-handed thieves, and the leprous beggars who occasionally visited their village had not prepared her for any of this.

  But she lived, and for that she had to be grateful as another day headed toward its end and the longed-for watery gruel.

  Juliana turned her grease-smeared wrists to examine the sores festering there. They were not healing. She looked up. The tiniest of breezes had stroked her cheek. It held a smell too, a memory of food. Roast lamb, spiced maybe, like her mother used to make, or was it something else?

  A distant fanfare blared. Shouts rang out. The clamoring grew, spreading toward her along the ranks of the army. Then, as quickly as it had sprung up, it died away. The rustling of ten thousand cavalry, the clinking of their sun-emblazoned shields and breastplates, had terrified her at first, but as that summer wore on, the noise had faded in her mind, until now, she only heard them if she truly listened.

  Another murmur passed along the column.

  Every head turned.

  The naked executioner gestured stiff-armed contempt at the captiv
es passing by, as laughing soldiers dragged a boy clothed in a single rag, with a mane of charcoal hair, toward him.

  The boy arched his back like a terrified goat which had smelled the block.

  Dizziness blossomed inside Juliana and she stumbled, fell out of the line. The two girls who were roped to her flailed to a stop. She pulled them toward her, out of the way of the other captives trudging past; the women staring their pity at her, the young men’s eyes drinking in her body visible through the tears in her thin woolen dress. She glared back at them, too tired to care about what they could see. Some men, the girls had whispered, could rip a loin cloth away with their teeth, even if their arms were cut off.

  The two girls tied to Juliana were already cursing like cheated traders. One of them kicked Juliana’s thigh, hard. Screams followed. Juliana looked up at them through dust-rimmed eyes. Another kick landed. But that was it. Both girls were distracted, glancing back and forth along the column, fear filling their eyes.

  She let her breath out, relishing the momentary relief of not trudging forward. She closed her eyes. When will it all be over?

  “You’ll have plenty of time on your back in the years ahead, Roman,” a eunuch’s disdainful voice called out.

  She opened her eyes. A horse’s thigh shivered above her. Giant flies danced around it. A hoof pawed the whitened grass around her. She moved back swiftly, using her elbows. The horse stomped after her.

  Her muscles tightened, expecting the crush of the hooves. She stopped moving, closed her eyes. Let him stamp on me. I don’t care.

  But all the eunuch did was curse her loudly in Persian. She breathed in the dust, held it as it tickled her throat. Trampling was not how the Persians killed disobedient captives. They had more entertaining ways to do that.

  Her hands were yanked, her shoulders half wrenched from her body. The eunuch’s whip snapped the air.

  He leaned toward her. He knew how to finish off captives who couldn’t stay the pace. The Persian army left bodies in its wake every day.

  “Don’t rest, little Roman, or I will send you to him.” The eunuch pointed toward the ridge on the right. The executioner had the boy’s head in the air on his sword tip, the face contorted with fright, the mouth so wide the back teeth glistened as blood dripped.

  “Move, Roman, or you will be the next to die.”

  The eunuch turned and cantered off in a spray of dust. Juliana glared at him. Death held no fear for her. It would be more than welcome. She made a defiant face at his disappearing back. The other slave girls copied her. Then she stood, and they all started walking. She could not see them dead because of her.

  Walking, walking, walking until, just when she knew for sure the day would never end, the horns wailed. The army spread out, winding into a circle, transforming that part of the grassy plain into a nomad city. Cooking fires were lit and, almost instantly, a patchwork of tents mushroomed around them. Juliana and the girls she was tethered to waited, huddled together, too far beyond exhaustion to talk.

  Nearby, the nobles’ tents were being set up. It was the first time the captured slave girls had been told to wait near these tents. They had the same round shape as the tents that made up most of the camp, but these were not patched like the others, they were newer, cleaner. Whenever they stopped, she tried to spot Narses, the Persian King of Kings. She wanted to see the man they called the Grand Mage, the Keeper of the Sacred Fire. They’d been told they were his property now when they were captured, and that if they ran and were beheaded as a result, their villages would owe their price to him.

  She saw something that made her almost call out. Two girls, about her age, sheathed in shimmering gold cloth, were running through the half-completed nobles’ tents. They looked happy. And then they were gone.

  She closed her mouth to stifle the cry of envy which rose like a blade inside her. She went back to dreaming of food and buckets of water. Enough to keep her tongue from swelling.

  She bent, coughed, coughed again.

  “You Romans should bury your shit.” She looked up. A eunuch strutted toward her.

  She straightened her back.

  “Stupid, dirty Romans.” He laughed to himself.

  It made no difference that she wore her hair in the never-cut pony-tail style and that it was the right oil-black color and length for a young Persian girl. Her long bony face looked foreign, Roman, unmistakably so, and all Romans are the spawn of Ahriman, the great daemon, she’d heard them say often enough.

  “Roman legions are near. Our scouts can smell their dirt,” the girl beside her whispered. Juliana touched her lips for silence.

  “Your chicken-hearted emperor will have to fight soon.”

  Since they’d found out that her father had been a smith attached to a Roman legion, they’d not let up with the jibes and insults. But she hadn’t known her father and wouldn’t recognize him if he lay dying in front of her. Though strangely, the idea that he might be near sent her gaze to the horizon.

  “No talking,” the eunuch roared. His bull whip cracked the air. This one was younger than the others. He’d spoken to her in a way that had sent peals of hope through her after she’d been captured, but now she’d learnt what all the eunuchs were like, it sparked only wariness. Eunuchs, she’d learned from the whispers of the other girls, like to play games with captives destined for the slave market, especially the ones with ugly foreign faces, who were unlikely to make a good price.

  “Well, my little Roman.” He was standing near, his mustiness overpowering. “Did you see our little friend today? He was from a village near yours, wasn’t he?” She kept her face still. The eunuch’s lips cracked open and the folds of flesh above his ears creased, as if worms were arranging themselves beneath his skin.

  He pointed a dirty finger at her. “Remember.” He leaned closer. She could smell garlic on his breath. She stared back at him. “I can cut your heart out.” He put his hand to the hilt of the knife in his belt. “And eat it in front of you, and all I will get is praise for removing another Roman daemon from this world.”

  A second eunuch had come over to see what was going on. This one stroked an amulet, an oversized phallus, which rested against his bloated stomach as he spoke.

  “Did you tell her?”

  “Not yet. Can’t I have a little fun?” The first one laughed, his small bare belly gyrating.

  “The priests require a volunteer, little ones.” He walked around them all, his tone soft, mocking. “A volunteer who wishes to be freed from our daily toil.” He looked into one tired girl’s face, then the next.

  “A volunteer, a little one who’s right for this duty.” He winked at Juliana.

  She looked away. Loud squawking broke out above her head. A flock of silvery cranes flew past, oblivious of everything going on below, heading toward the forested slopes of the mountain. A deep longing filled her, sending trembles through her chest. She knew such forests well, the calls of chiffchaff, the cries of the secretive black-hooded crows her mother fed and talked to. They were a refuge, a place of safety, where her mother had taught her things, answered any question, and eased her fears with hugs and whispers.

  “Look at me, little Roman.” Her tied wrists were wrenched high.

  She looked at him, her mouth clamped shut, staring directly into his eyes, daring him to kill her and get it all over with.

  He shook the rope.

  She swayed, closed her eyes.

  Make it swift, please. I am lost. I am alone. I may as well be dead.

  The whip cracked through the air.

  II

  Lower Armenia, 297 A.D.

  Constantine looked up through a gap in the canopy of trees as a flock of birds flew past, silhouetted against an azure sky. They were hurrying, beating their wings as if, like the army he was attached to, they too were being chased by a Persian army.

  He breathed in hard. Every action he took part in would be judged, he knew, and to a high standard, not only because he was a junior Tribune of th
e Jovian guard, the emperor of the east’s personal legion, and had to be regularly assessed for his ability to lead, but also because he was Flavius Valerius Constantine, the son of the emperor of the west.

  When he looked back down along the steep embankment, a dizziness almost overcame him. He had to close his eyes to steady himself. When he opened them, Persian horsemen had entered the narrow track below. He counted. There were ten of them.

  The observation point he’d picked was a good one, behind a drift of fallen pine tree branches, on a bed of quills, where he could peer through gaps in the brush to see the track below.

  “Awoooooooooooo.” A distant wolf howl cut through the air.

  Just as abruptly, it ceased. A hush settled over the forest. The strap at his right knee was cutting into him again. It could wait, movement would give them away.

  He lay still, breathing softly. His dark crimson cloak covered him almost completely, letting him fade into the forest gloom.

  His companion shifted his position slightly. Constantine moved a little forward to get a clearer view of the path below. His hand gripped the pommel of his sword.

  The lead Persian scout halted, raised a gloved hand to stop the riders behind him. He scanned the forest and the incline. His helmet glinted as he turned one way then the other.

  Then the Persian scout stared straight at him. Constantine stared back. There was no way the man could see him. A column of evening sunlight shone in the air between them. Midges and dust motes swirled in its beam. Perhaps the man was looking at them.

  The Persian riders whispered to each other. Their lead scout threw his head back, sniffed the air.

  “Find the Persian camp,” Constantine had been told, before he’d led the scouting mission out that afternoon. The officer hadn’t bothered repeating what almost everyone knew, that no other scouting mission had managed the task in the previous three nights, since they’d been skirting the mountains.