Queen of Kings - Maria Dahvana Headley [149]
“PREPARE FOR BATTLE!” Agrippa bellowed, and within moments, all the men were running, to their stations, running for their lives.
“You will give me my children!” Cleopatra shouted. “Give them to me, and I will spare Rome its army. Keep them, and you will all die.”
Her voice echoed unnaturally, amplified. Augustus could see the details of his enemy from his position. Her bracelets. Her tight linen gown unspoiled by these months, this year since she had been buried. He could see her curving body beneath the sheer fabric. She was a demon, he knew. He knew.
He could see the accursed silver box she carried in her hands. He could feel her breathing across the battlefield. Not human. Nothing human about her.
Augustus suppressed a sound as he caught sight of a crocodile clambering out of the water. Another. And another after it. The water roiled with their tails. Above the crater, the animals continued to come, eerily silent. No roars, no singing. They came as though they were ghosts, but they were not. Augustus could smell their hunger, the rich scent of the cats and the musky scent of the snakes. The moonlit sky grew dark with birds and bats.
“My children,” Cleopatra repeated. “You took my husband from me, and I will have my children back.”
“I will not give them to you!” Augustus shouted, finding his voice at last. “You are not fit to have them. Who are you to demand sacrifices of Rome? What you lost, you lost in war!”
Augustus felt all his men beginning to panic. He looked to Agrippa, and saw him making frantic gestures, instructing the men to hold their positions.
She was still too far from him to touch him. He was grateful for that. Not afraid, no. She was only an enemy, and there had been many enemies. His head wore the crown, and he knew that it was desired by every man who had ever walked the earth. And every woman, too. There was no one alive who did not want to rule the world.
She tilted her head, noticing for the first time the man beside the emperor.
“Nicolaus,” she said, and the emperor heard sorrow in her tone. Beside him, the historian moved uncomfortably closer to Agrippa. Augustus pushed him back into the shelter of the pavilion. He was derailing the negotiation.
“You lost your husband and your children when you lost your city, and you lost your city because you were not strong enough to keep it. You will surrender to me!” Augustus continued, looking into her dark eyes. He would kill her. He held the bow of Hercules behind his back, with its deathly poisoned arrow.
“Do you believe your own words?” Cleopatra asked him, her tone warning. “Do I look weak to you, Octavian? I am not the woman who lost a war in Alexandria. I am no longer Cleopatra.”
Augustus stood his ground. “You are nothing!” Augustus shouted. “You are a slave to this empire!”
Agrippa shouted a command, and the men of the Roman army marched forward around the rim of the crater in perfect formation, though their feet slipped and dislodged boulders at the crater’s edge. A man fell screaming into space, tumbling into the dark and sinking beneath the lake’s waters, weighed down by his armor.
The others of his line maintained their spacing. Their shields were raised to form a wall of metal before them.
Cleopatra merely raised her hands, and the sounds of her animals, heretofore silenced, ripped through the air. There was no line, and this was no normal battle formation.
Instead, the Romans were faced with a mass of beasts, sleek and rough, fanged and tremendous. The lions and tigers roared, and gathered themselves into shining masses of violence, and the Romans felt their bodies liquefy in fear. What sort of war was this? They were not bestiarii. They had not been trained to fight animals, and their commander had not warned them