‘I am Emperor by the consent of the Senate and people of Rome,’ Otho had said. ‘Vitellius must recognize that.’
And there lay the greatest obstacle to a peaceful solution. For Aulus Vitellius to recognize Otho as his Emperor was to betray the officers and men who had proclaimed him to the purple, and to place their lives in Otho’s hands. Even if Vitellius himself agreed to trust Otho, it was possible his legionaries would get rid of him and elect one of their own legates in his place. Valerius’s old friend was many things, but he was no fool. Who knew what his reaction would be to the man who put the choice to him?
Valerius turned back to the road and Serpentius took up station beside him. They were dressed as a none-too-prosperous merchant and his servant. The Spaniard trailed a pack horse and the goods it carried had more to do with the journey they faced than the trade that was ostensibly the reason for it. ‘We may be travelling on a fool’s errand, and one that might end up with us dead, but still I think it is a journey worth making.’ Valerius told his companion. ‘What are two lives when balanced against the thousands we might save?’
‘I don’t know about yours, but when it comes to mine the answer is quite a lot.’ Serpentius grinned. Otho’s secretary had provided them with a travel warrant that would take them anywhere in the Empire and allow them to change their horses at military remount stations. It was the choice of route that worried the Spaniard. ‘Safer and more certain to take the river road through Gaul. That’s the way they’ll come and there’s no point in us riding all the way to Germania if Vitellius is already on the way here.’
Valerius shook his head. ‘His legions will stay in their winter quarters for another month at least. The one thing I’m certain of is that Aulus Vitellius won’t put on his campaign boots until he needs to. He is a man who enjoys his comforts, and being in the saddle for too long isn’t one of them. Anyway, you’re the hardy mountain man. I’d have thought you’d be glad to get back into the hills.’
‘In the middle of winter? I’ve seen the Alps in summer and I didn’t like it then. Only fit for goats and ghosts. You’d have to be mad to want to freeze your colei off in the mountains. Why do you think the gods made valleys, warm huts and women?’
They took the Via Flaminia north and east through the mountains towards the town of Fanum Fortunae on the Mare Adriaticum, changing their horses every day at Imperial staging posts. Valerius decided to avoid the official mansiones, preferring to stay anonymously at civilian inns and hostels where they didn’t have to produce their papers. The warrant was sound enough, but some sixth sense warned him against leaving a trail for someone to follow. There was no need to consult a map; the road ran straight and true, with only the slightest deviation for troublesome river crossings and impassable summits. Near the end of the third day, when they were deep in the heart of the mountains, Serpentius suggested they stop and make camp rather than pushing on to find the next taberna. He nodded back the way they’d come. ‘I’ll double back for a mile or so and take a look. I’ve had an itch in my ear for the past couple of hours.’
‘Do you want me to prepare anything?’ Serpentius’s instinct for trouble was as finely honed as any animal’s and Valerius had long since learned to trust his friend.
The Spaniard shook his head. ‘It could be nothing. Just light a fire and prepare the bedding and we’ll see what happens.’
He returned less than an hour later and dropped from the saddle to join Valerius in a gully just off the track. ‘Two of them dogging our footsteps,’ he said quietly. ‘They stopped when they smelled the smoke and one scouted to within two hundred paces of the camp. We still have two hours of daylight. An honest man would have ridden past.’
‘Perhaps they think we’re bandits,’ Valerius suggested.
‘Not them. I recognize their kind and no bandit would frighten them. Handy men, wary and alert.’ Valerius smiled. Serpentius could have been describing himself. ‘They’re nothing to laugh about,’ the Spaniard said seriously. ‘If they’d come on us unawares, they might have given us a hard time of it.’
‘And now?’
‘Now, I think we should give them a hard time of it.’
They kept watch on watch through the night, but Valerius sensed the two followers weren’t an immediate threat. A nuisance and a potential danger, though. And working for whom? It had the scent of Offonius Tigellinus’s work, but Tigellinus was in hiding. His cunning had allowed him to survive Nero’s passing, but Otho owed him nothing and the Senate had demanded his head as the blood price of their support. If not Tigellinus, surely it pointed to the Emperor himself, or at least his court, but why would Otho have them followed when he had entrusted them with the mission in the first place?