The Son of Rome

Having aired his frustration, Griffon seemed to shake the worst of his foul mood. Whether it was relief after admitting it, or irritation with himself for letting it show so clearly, he throttled his violent intent and restrained himself to his usual provocations. We both took a dip in the Ionian, and then while we waited for Scythas to secure us a ship we spread the map out on the sand and discussed the task ahead.

“Bakkhos lived a full life, if nothing else at all,” I marveled, tracing connecting lines through the drops of liquid gold that Socrates had marked the map with. “No matter what order these took place in, the journey alone…”

I had done my fair share of marching since my father took me with him to Gaius’ legions. I had seen vast frigid wastelands, trudged through marshes and built bridges across the seas, and even traversed Hercynia Silva, the black forest that spanned entire nations - not once, but twice. Cultivation lent speed to a man’s stride, but even then Gaius’ campaigns had taken months and months of travel before combat ever came into play.

I had spent my formative years marching, yet the task ahead was still daunting. The map Socrates had given us covered a vast expanse. The region I was most familiar with, the colony nation we knew as Magna Graecia, was only a bare sliver on the western edge of the map. Of all the Greek settlements west of the Ionian Sea, Alikos, the Scarlet City, was the only one labeled. There were no golden markers to be found there.

East of the Ionian, the central landmass of the free Mediterranean was marked by gold in four places. One in Levánta, the city-state just over the mountain ranges east of Olympia. Another was at the southernmost coast, a city-state marked Krōkos with a smaller label beneath it that ominously read Infernal Frenzy Cult. Further north, above the Coast and its two opposing mystery cults, the city of Paléta was partially obscured by another drop of gold. Finally, on the western coast and furthest north, edging towards the grand territories of Macedonia, the fourth golden marker was accompanied by the word Aornum and nothing else.

“It’s going to be longer for us, starting in the middle like this,” Griffon said, lounging on his side in his preferred way, with his cheek propped up on a raised palm. His golden hair was still dripping seawater, slicked back without its usual waves. His eyebrows furrowed as he tapped the marker in question. “I have more than half a mind to ignore the good philosopher’s suggestion entirely. Begin somewhere more sensible.”

“And do what when we get there?” I asked wryly. “Ask around for the ingredients to make divine nectar? Say our prayers and hope we’ll know them when we see them?”

He scoffed, but we both knew it wasn’t feasible. Socrates had only given us one clear objective to start with, and that was a golden cup filled with sacred wine from the region marked beneath Griffon’s finger.

Thracia, the land with no definite boundaries. The marker was east of Macedonia and just off the northern coast of the Aegean Sea. It was our first destination, and we’d evidently need to sail if we wanted to make good time.

“If the Gadfly would just give us a proper list, we could hit four of ten before Thracia was a speck on the horizon,” Griffon lamented anyway, sweeping a finger up from Krókos at the southern tip of the central landmass and along its eastern side, to Levánta and then out east into the Aegean Sea where another golden marker resided amidst a cluster of islands. Then he dragged his finger back west and north up the coast, passing Paléta before finally docking at Thracia at the northern edge of the Aegean.

“He may not know exactly what to look for just yet,” I said. Then, having spoken my day’s worth of diplomatic statements, I added, “or more likely, he just wants to keep us busy.”

“Worthless old man,” he muttered. “The journey is long enough without him adding on to it.”

It was true. It would have been an arduous undertaking even if we had managed to convince Elissa, Kyno, and Lefteris to assist us in the end. There were still four more markers left after those six. The next closest was on the free Mediterranean’s easternmost landmass, just off the coast of the Aegean - Nkrí, the Greek city-state home to the Blind Maiden Cult. From there, the remaining three were truly distant.

“It’s these three that concern me.” I said, indicating each one. They had been the first to draw my eyes when Socrates gave us the map. Two that were all too close to home, and one that was dauntingly far.

South of the Aegean, beyond the Alabaster Isles, two more golden drops had been placed at the bottom of the map. One was in Libya. The other was in Egypt, a golden drop atop the world’s second largest - no. It used to be the second largest city in the world, before Rome was burned and salted. Now it was the first. The map marked it simply as His Pearl. Apparently, even writing Alexander’s name was a risk too far for the Greeks.

The last of the three that concerned me, the tenth and final marker, was so far east that the map could not properly place it. A winding arrow indicated a likely path, but the destination was uncharted. The location was a single word.

India.

“What is there to be concerned about?” Griffon asked airily. “It’s only a quick jaunt through the Conqueror’s favored city and then a brisk march off the edge of the world.”

I pressed my finger to Libya.

“The hounds took Africa from us first,” I said quietly. Griffon’s eyes sharpened, losing their mirth. “By the time we realized, it was too late to do anything about it. We had already committed to fighting them in Gaul. No matter how many eagles we sent, not a single one was returned. It’s been nearly four years since then. There’s no telling how much of the southern continent they’ve devoured since.”

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“Is that so?” His tone was thoughtful. “Seems we’ll be gutting your dogs sooner than later.”

“No,” I said, though it tasted like ash. I inhaled slowly, the salt of the Ionian thick in the air. “Not yet. Not until I’m strong enough to sweep them all into the sea.”

“We’ll see.” Griffon drew an invisible line with his finger, just west of Alexander’s pearl city. “Regardless, we can tell this much. No matter how fearsome those dogs are, this is as far as they’ll ever go in Libya. No free city has ever fallen to a barbarian incursion - demonic or otherwise.”

“Wrong.”

He blinked.

“Excuse me?”

“You’re wrong,” I said, brushing his finger aside and deliberately laying my own over the pearl city in Egypt. “This one fell four years ago. To us.”

“Impossible,” he said immediately. I met his gaze steadily. After four seconds I saw the first spark of confusion, smothered quickly by disdain. “It’s a bit late for propaganda, isn’t it?”

“It is,” I agreed. Disdain gave way to doubt.

“Prove it,” Griffon challenged me.

So I reached out, at the same time immersing myself in bittersweet recollection -

The limestone blocks of the towering lighthouse were slick with sea mist, made worse by the sweat on my palms. My heart hammered a frenetic beat in my chest, so loud that I nearly couldn’t hear the men cheering down below. I forced myself to keep climbing. I refused to back down.

When I finally made it to the top, gripping the shoulder of the Father’s faceless statue, I took the Eagle standard out of my teeth and tied it to the statue’s outstretched hand.

Gaius’ men roared gleefully as I leaned back and waved down at them, the Pharos of Alexandria flying the Republic’s flag for all the world to see.

- and I obliged him.

“What?” He breathed, his eyes unfocused as he played the truth of my lived experience over in his head. “What?”

“It was Gaius’ last campaign,” I explained, clenching my fist above the map and withdrawing it. “The final one before… before. I saw the Egyptian navy sink into the Nile with my own eyes, and I watched the beasts of virtue lurking beneath its waters tear their king limb-from-limb. The pearl city welcomed Gaius with open arms after that. As did their new queen.”

I muscled down an old unease, memories of the queen in Egypt and her inhuman eyes. A headdress that was no headdress at all, feral ears jutting up from the crown of her head like an animal’s. I had seen far uglier sights prior to that day and since, but the memory of that first meeting always unsettled me. Nearly everything about that city and its people did.

“That- hold on.” Griffon buried his face in his palm, pankration hands manifesting at either temple and massaging with incorporeal knuckles. “That doesn’t make any sense. Even if your legions somehow managed it, there should have been aid from the north. The Amazons, the Alabaster Isles, the mainland. Us. Someone.”

“The enlisted men didn’t understand it either,” I admitted. “We were pursuing an enemy from within, the last of Gaius’ opposition in Rome. That Egypt would offer Pompey safe haven was one thing. But that they chose to fight us alone when we came marching up their shores, with Greek allies just over the Aegean? The men thought Gaius was tempting the Fates.”

Looking back, maybe he was.

“But Gaius convinced them in the end. His reasoning was simple. Yet profound.” I shrugged when Griffon made a gap with his fingers to stare incredulously at me. “You Greeks so revile the Conqueror, or otherwise are so terrified of his memory, that you refuse to even write his name on your maps centuries after he left. Why would any of you lift a finger to help the city he built for himself?”

“Because it’s ours.”

“Is it? The city in Egypt, built by a Macedonian - what about that sounds Greek to you?” It was an honest question, one that I had wondered about for months after Gaius’ conquest there. All the way up until word came from the west, and everything else ceased to matter.

“This,” came Griffon’s sharp reply, muffled by the hand over his face. A rosy pankration finger jabbed sharply down on the map, scraping the golden marker just beneath His Pearl away from the papyrus and revealing the words scrawled underneath.

Scattered Foam Cult.

“The free cities threw back the Conqueror at the very start of his campaigns,” Griffon explained, raising the rosy finger to his mouth and scraping the gold onto his tongue. “Some say that he could have taken us if he had truly desired it, but most of those people are disgusting Macedonians and their word means less than a Roman’s. Whatever the case, he left the Greek cities with nothing to show for his labors, and we made sure he knew it.

“It’s only natural for a man to harbor a grudge over failure like that. Any man, let alone the Conqueror. We had denied him admittance into our culture, taken from the starving Tyrant his first substantial meal, and he despised us for it. He never made another overture into our cities, but he took everything that surrounded them. And eventually, inevitably, he found for himself something incredible.”

“A greater mystery of the world,” I murmured, eyes widening.

“The one thing that we could not possibly ignore,” Griffon agreed. “He found something in the fields of bountiful Egypt that did not belong there. He found something of ours. And so, when he sent his smug heralds to inform us of his discovery, we free cities had no choice but to accept his gracious offer - the construction of a proper city at his own expense to house this profound natural phenomenon, thereafter surrendered to the Greek diaspora where it surely belonged. Any Greek citizen would be welcome within its walls. His only requirement was, of course, that they obey the governance of the Macedonians that had built it.”

Their alternative options being war with the man that had so recently brought them to the brink, or a willing forfeiture of a key to their mystery faith. No choice at all, in the end.

“I think you just answered your own question,” I mused. “The city was only ever yours by technicality. Whether the Macedonian on the throne is beholden to themselves or to another barbarian benefactor, the outcome is the same. Why shed blood for it?”

“As if it would have been some great sacrifice on our part,” he said, his lip lifting from his teeth. “It was only Rome.”

This time, I punched him.