Tales of Ancient Rome by S. J. A. Turney Page B

sloshed as he held it and then, for the very first time in ten years of the practice, he saw the future in the blood. His client would be infamous for all time for the events of this very day! His name would be spoken in hushed, disapproving tones.
    Spurius lurched back and had to fight not to drop the dish. Rattled and breathing heavily, he placed it on the small remaining space on the altar and took up his knife. He barely even heard himself intoning the words as he began to open the beast and cut away the liver, his heart thumping so fast that he worried he might collapse.
    Trying to look professional and not rattled, he withdrew the liver and glanced down.
    He dropped the liver into the open cavity in shock and had to hurriedly retrieve it while his audience were squinting in the bright sun to see what was going on. The liver was talking to him in ways he’d always imagined a real haruspex would experience. Suddenly he could see things in the patterns on it. He could picture the shape of things to come. His eyes were drawn inexorably over the top of the palace roof and to the great Temple of Solomon beyond. Why him? Why now?
     
    He swallowed again. No, it had not been an easy morning.
    Straightening, he thrust his blood-coated arms up and fixed Lucius Pontius Pilatus, Prefect of Judaea, square in the eye as he lied through his teeth.
    “ The omens are good, my lord. Jupiter smiles on your rule here, Juno will grant peace to this corner of the empire, and Minerva will grant you the wisdom to follow the most noble of paths.”
    Pontius Pilatus, his expression suggesting that he was less than convinced with the performance, turned to his adjutant.
    “ Very well. Tell the Sanhedrin that I’ll authorise it. Nail him up in the morning and I’ll have nothing more to do with the whole affair.”
    As a functionary dropped a small pouch of coins into Spurius’ hand, Pilatus turned to his friends and ushered them away to prepare for the noon meal.
    Leaving everything for the slaves to tidy away, Spurius, shaken to the core, grasped his knife and tools and hurried from the palace, down the steps and the hell away from this place.
    Haruspicy gave him the creeps.
    Time to make a living from gambling... or maybe sheep farming.
    On the way across the square to collect Fuscus, he paused to throw the abominable conical hat into the fountain in disgust.
     
    Exploratores
     
    Tiberius Claudius Maximus reined in his horse and sat on the low ridge, scanning the horizon. Flies buzzed around him in the summer heat and his mail shirt sat uncomfortably warm and heavy, made all the more so by the large oval shield hanging on his back.
    The ridge was low; less than two hundred feet above the level of the valleys on either side. To his left; the west, a huge plain stretched out, hemmed in distantly by hazy grey mountains that shimmered in the heat, marching away toward Sarmizegethusa and the camp of the emperor Trajan and the four legions that had crossed the Danubius at the summer’s beginning. To the other side, a long valley less than a mile wide stretched off to the north and into the hazy distance.
    “ Quiet!” he said, his voice low, but carrying a gravitas that silenced the four troopers who sat astride their own mounts ten yards back, sunning themselves.
    “ Sir? You see something?”
    Maximus frowned, ignoring the question, his eyes focusing on tiny movements along the valley. One of dozens of carefully-selected scout riders sent out with patrols, he was sharp-eyed, battle-hardened, an experienced veteran and, above all, capable of thinking on his feet and controlling any situation with instinctive command.
    Something was clearly wrong. None of his men seemed to have noticed, but Maximus could see it clear as a vexillum. The collection of rude huts with straw roofs that constituted the Dacian village was quiet; too quiet and yet not quiet enough. It would be entirely understandable if the village were empty and deserted. The Roman