Chapter 26: The Longest Night

The night of the festival of Luna descended upon Rome in a riot of sound and firelight. From his high window in the palace, Alex could hear the distant roar of the crowds, the faint music of pipes and drums from the street festivals, and the pop and hiss of countless celebratory bonfires that painted the underside of the clouds a dull, flickering orange. The city was alive, drunk on wine and religion, utterly oblivious to the silent, deadly play about to unfold within the marble heart of the empire. Alex stood alone in the center of his vast, torchlit bedchamber. He was not cowering in a corner or hiding behind furniture. He was dressed in a simple, dark wool tunic, belted at the waist. At his side, a plain, unadorned gladius was strapped, its leather grip familiar and solid in his hand. He was pacing, not with the frantic energy of fear, but with the controlled, predatory restlessness of a commander waiting for the battle to be joined. The terror he had felt on the Danube, the gnawing anxiety of his first days in Rome, had been burned away, leaving behind a core of cold, hard resolve. He was afraid, yes—the fear was a low hum beneath his thoughts—but it was the fear of a leader, a fear for the men whose lives rested on his plan, not the fear of a victim. His thoughts drifted to those men. He pictured Maximus, now stripped of his general's regalia, dressed in the simple, functional armor of a common centurion. He imagined him moving like a grey shadow through the palace's labyrinthine service corridors, his hand gestures sharp and precise as he checked on his hidden soldiers. Alex could almost see them: fifty of the toughest men in the world, veterans of the northern wars, tucked away in alcoves, behind heavy tapestries, in darkened storerooms. Men who had fought bears and berserkers, now holding their breath in the perfumed silence of a palace, waiting to become ghosts. He felt a profound weight of responsibility for them. Miles away, in the bustling Castra Praetoria, Captain Cassius Valerius was feeling none of that weight. He was feeling the heady rush of ambition. He addressed the thirty men of his hand-picked detachment, their faces illuminated by the torches of the barracks yard. They were the best of his cohort—strong, ruthless, and loyal to the promise of gold. "Tonight, we make our fortunes!" Valerius declared, his voice a confident baritone. "The boy-emperor has offended the gods and the traditions of Rome. He has alienated the Senate. He is a weak link in the Aurelian chain. We will perform a service to the state, and we will be rewarded as heroes!" He saw the greedy glint in their eyes and knew he had them. They believed the lie. They believed they were acting for the good of Rome, a convenient fiction that would allow them to sleep at night after they had murdered their emperor. The signal came—a messenger, one of his own men, breathlessly reporting a fire near the imperial wing. It was the pretext. "To the palace!" Valerius bellowed. "Move!" The troop of Praetorians marched through the mostly deserted palace grounds, their hobnailed sandals echoing on the flagstones. The sounds of the festival outside were the perfect cover. As they entered the Domus Augustana, Valerius was pleased by how quiet and empty the corridors were. Maximus's quiet reassignment of loyal officers had worked perfectly. The path seemed clear, a gift from the gods. They encountered only a handful of guards, who seemed confused and offered only token resistance before being brutally clubbed into unconsciousness. Maximus's men were playing their parts well, feigning incompetence to lull the traitors into a false sense of security. They moved with grim efficiency, reaching the antechamber to the imperial apartments. Two Praetorian guards stood before the massive, gilded doors of the emperor's bedroom. They were huge men, their faces impassive. "Stand aside!" Valerius commanded. "There is a fire threat. We are here to secure the Emperor." The guard on the right, a man with a jagged scar across his cheek, did not move. "Our orders are that no one is to disturb the Emperor tonight," he said, his voice a low gravel. Valerius scoffed. He had no time for this. "I am Captain Valerius of the night watch! I am your superior officer! Stand aside or be cut down!" The guard simply shook his head. "Our orders are from General Maximus." The name gave Valerius a moment's pause, but his ambition quickly overrode it. "Fools!" he snarled. "Then you will die for him!" He drew his sword. "Kill them!" The assassins surged forward. The two guards, who were in fact two of Maximus's most decorated and deadly centurions, drew their own blades. A short, vicious fight exploded in the confined space. The two legionaries fought with a ferocity that stunned the Praetorians. They were not palace guards; they were killing machines, their movements economical and deadly. One of Valerius's men went down, his throat opened by a lightning-fast thrust. Another screamed as a gladius sheared through the muscle of his sword arm. But it was thirty against two. The sheer weight of numbers was too much. One of the legionaries was pierced by three swords at once; the other went down under a hail of blows, taking one more traitor with him before he fell. Valerius, his blood pumping, stepped over the bodies. He turned to the gilded doors and, with a triumphant roar, kicked them open. He and his men poured into the bedchamber, their swords ready, expecting to find their target helpless and asleep in his massive, canopied bed. Instead, the room was brightly lit by a dozen lanterns. The bed was empty, its fine silk sheets undisturbed. And standing in the middle of the room, his expression eerily calm, was Emperor Commodus. He held a single, lit lantern in his left hand, its light casting his face in stark shadows. In his right hand, he held a drawn gladius, its point resting steadily on the marble floor. He looked not like a terrified boy, but like a statue of a god waiting for a sacrifice. The sight of him, awake, armed, and waiting, stopped the assassins dead in their tracks. The sheer, unnerving wrongness of the scene paralyzed them for a fatal second. "Captain Cassius Valerius," Alex said, his voice perfectly calm and clear, carrying easily across the silent room. He even managed a small, sad smile. "I was expecting you. Your treason is an offense to the gods, and a deep personal disappointment to me." Before Valerius could process the shock, before he could order his men to charge, a sound cut through the air. It was not a sound of the festival outside. It was a single, piercing blast from a Roman military horn, echoing from somewhere deep within the palace. It was Maximus's signal. The effect was instantaneous. The ornate tapestry on the far wall was ripped aside, revealing a hidden doorway from which five silent, grim-faced men emerged, their short swords already in their hands. The doors to the adjoining bathing suite burst open, disgorging another ten. From the corridor they had just come down, from storerooms and servant passages they had blindly passed, the ghosts appeared. Fifty of them. Hardened legionaries, their faces devoid of mercy, moving with the terrifying silence of wolves. They sealed the antechamber. They blocked the corridor. There was no retreat. The hunters had, in the space of a single heartbeat, become the hunted. The trap had snapped shut. The Night of Long Knives had just begun.