©2001 by WILDBEARIES

This story is based on characters created in the film, "Gladiator" and in no way intended to infringe upon those characters or the story of that film. References to real people are strictly the product of the writer's imagination and meant to entertain the reader.
-------------------------------------------------

Thirty Two

"I told you, I did it to save your life - weren't you listening?"

Antoninus stepped forward, a hand raised to strike the wounded man for impertinence, but Maximus caught his wrist, stopping him. "He admits to it!" The furious cavalry officer exclaimed. "He could have killed you."

"Ah," Maximus said with a wry grin, "but the point is - he didn't. What if what he claims is true? What if he is working for the good of Rome and not against it?"

Disgusted, Antoninus glared at the man in the bed. "How can you know for sure?"

"My word is good," Valerian said softly. He was tired - tired because he was recuperating from two wounds and tired of answering the same questions over and over. He knew Maximus was trying to trip him up, and he also knew he wasn't about to be tripped up - unless he grew so tired his tongue stumbled over an answer and made it appear he was lying. "Ask the Augusta - she knows me."

"Bah, that was years back, you could be as evil as her dead brother by now," Antoninus sneered. At a look from his general, he sighed, turned away from the sleeping couch and went out into the atrium. He wasn't as inclined as Maximus apparently was to believe the man. He knew of Valerian, but they had moved in totally different circles, so he didn't actually know the man himself, only his reputation as a by-the-book officer. "The question is, which book?" he muttered to himself, "Commodus' or Marcus Aurelius'?"

"He was my father's man then, and he's on the side of right now," Lucilla's flat statement interrupted Antoninus in the midst of his musings. "You've badgered him enough, I'm going to throw Maximus out of the room right now." She turned on her heel and marched into the guest room, from whence Antoninus shortly heard a sharp exchange of words between her and the general. This was followed almost at once by Maximus striding out of the room looking furious, Lucilla smiling contentedly, at his heel. "No more - I will not have a guest under my roof questioned for hours."

"Lucilla, he's my prisoner, not your guest - " Maximus began.

She interrupted him with a sharp, imperious gesture. "Enough! If I have to post my stoutest servants as guards on his door to keep you out, I will. Now leave him be and let him rest."

They glared at one another. Maximus suddenly recalled dozens of such arguments and stand-offs in their past. Of those, most of them had been won by her by virtue of her access to her father. The emperor had intervened in some cases, but in others, had not. Still, just the threat of Marcus Aurelius getting involved had caused Maximus to seek more strategic solutions to whatever the argument was with the emperor's willful daughter. "By the gods, I'm tired of your playing at being the divine Augusta," Maximus snapped.

Antoninus gaped at him. A pair of maidservants carrying clean linens to the storage room decided it would be prudent to bypass the atrium and go around the long way to avoid what would surely follow that declaration. Gemma peeked around the door frame of the guest room so as not to miss anything.

Lucilla merely smiled indulgently and said softly, "Maximus, in case you've forgotten - I AM the divine Augusta. Until Pertinax takes a wife - which is highly unlikely given his liking for boys - or until some other emperor sits on the Imperial throne and puts his wife in my position, I still bear that title."

Useless to argue when she was right. Maximus stared at her, turning over several different retorts - all of them scathing, none of them particularly wise - and decided to keep silent. He settled for rolling his eyes heavenward, shrugging, and stalking off. As he exited the round atrium, he was heard to tell Antoninus, "Come, a mule is easier to deal with than Lucilla Aurelia when she's in this mood."

Unfortunately, his statement - meant to anger her - merely amused her. Her laughter followed the two officers out the front door and into the small encampment his soldiers had set up outside. "Will you stay in the villa?" Antoninus wanted to know.

"No, somehow I think I might wake with a dagger in between my ribs after that last exchange. I'll stay in my tent." Maximus shook off his anger enough to grin at the centurion. "Perhaps in the morning she will be less imperial and more sensible."

"I will not hold my breath," Antoninus commented to himself as he went to find some supper. He'd never met a more stubborn, bossy woman than the Augusta. He liked women with brains, it was true, but not women with such a high opinion of themselves. "Augusta," he muttered in disgust, "more like spoiled brat."

In the morning, it was no better. Lucilla refused to leave the room when Maximus went in to question Valerian again. He couldn't very well throw her bodily out, nor could he truss her up and gag her to keep her quiet. He therefore decided to return to Emerita Augusta with Valerian. "We leave in the morning. See that he's ready."

Lucilla stared at him. "Have you lost your mind? A journey now would kill him!"

Maximus shrugged, "I really don't much care, as long as I get him away from your kindly hands."

"Ohhh," she snarled at him, hands fisted, "will you not listen? He's not your enemy!"

He shrugged again, making her want to slap him. "So you say. I've yet to get satisfactory answers from the man because of your mother-henning. So I will question him away from here and away from you, my lady." He smiled at her, pleased with his plan.

Lucilla smiled sweetly back, appearing to capitulate, "All right - take him to Emerita and kill him in the process - then you'll learn exactly nothing." She swept past him and out the door, her gold hair ornaments tinkling like tiny bells.

"That was too easy," Antoninus commented.

From his bed, Valerian voiced agreement. "Too easy by half."

"Shut up," Antoninus snapped, "I don't care to hear your opinion at all."

Valerian closed his eyes, weary of the whole lot of them. "Very well - but since I'm the one who's wounded and likely to die from the journey, I feel I should have some say-so in the situation."

Maximus resisted the urge to tear his hair in frustrated anger. They were all going to be the death of him from sheer aggravation. "Very well, I'll give you one extra day - we leave morning after next, be you well enough or not."

"Fine by me," Valerian muttered, suddenly very tired. He yawned and dozed off. Gemma came into the room and stationed herself at the foot of his bed, looking like nothing so much as a mother hen brooding over her one chick.

Maximus knew when he was bested. He strode off to make some notes in his journal, wrote a short note to be sent by fast courier to Emerita, then decided to ride over to his own villa and see what, if anything, was happening over there. At least that would take him out of Lucilla's immediate vicinity and he'd be less inclined to wring her pretty neck.

Two days hence, at dawn, the small column of cavalry set off for Emerita Augusta. Whereas they had ridden in numbering twenty one, they rode out numbering twenty three - Valerian and, to everyone's dismay, Lucilla, being the two additions to their number. These last two rode slowly, causing little progress to be made, but with Valerian still very weak and inclined to sway dizzily in the saddle, they had to accomodate him if they wanted him alive for questioning at the end of their journey. As for Lucilla - "You are not coming," Maximus told her firmly.

"I am," she said just as firmly, already mounted on her horse, a small pack that held a change of clothing and a few toilet items tied behind her saddle. "I rode all over Germania in the middle of winter, there is no reason on earth I can't make a little trip into Emerita Augusta in the summer time."

It was true - she had. She was a hardy woman despite her often delicate appearance. In sturdy clothing such as she wore now - a pair of soldier's britches cut down to fit her under a plain linen gown, leather riding boots and a shawl knotted around her shoulders against the dawn chill, she looked very like she had in Germania. There, of course, she wore heavier clothing and fur-lined outer garments, but that was about the only difference. And she looked just as stubbornly determined to have her way as he recalled her looking years before when he had to ride herd on her for her father.

"Very well," Maximus gave in. "But if you can't keep up, we'll not wait on you. And if he," he gestured to where Valerian was being virtually roped onto his horse, "if he falls off, I'll throw him over the saddle like a sack of grain and jounce him all the way to Emerita."

"Bully," Lucilla named him. She tapped a heel against the side of her horse and started up the road. She went ten paces and looked back where Maximus sat his horse, looking as if he wanted to spit nails. "Coming?" she sang out with sweetness so thick it almost stuck his teeth together.

"Spoiled brat," he mumbled, and gestured to the column to start moving. "Antoninus, ride beside Valerian and catch him if he falls off."

"Yes, sir," the centurion said, stationing himself beside Valerian, who merely grinned at the whole situation. "What are you grinning at?" Antoninus demanded.

"Nothing," Valerian lied. If he'd felt better, he would have actually laughed. He'd never seen any two adults become so childish around one another as the Spanish general and the daughter of Marcus Aurelius. Maximus earned his sympathies - he disliked dealing with willful women himself - but Lucilla - ah, gods, she was a magnificent woman, temper or no. He watched her as she rode just slightly in front of him. She sat her horse with an expert rider's grace, and asked for no special treatment as the day wore on. If she had to stop to answer the call of nature, she merely rode aside into the bushes, apparently handled the situation, then quickly caught up to the soldiers.

True to Maximus' word, they didn't stop for her, nor slow down. By mid afternoon, Valerian was wishing they had. Only the stout ropes lashing his booted feet together under the belly of his horse, and similar ropes fastening his wrists to the saddle kept him in it. The soldiers trotted up a small incline and his head swam. This was it - everything hurt and he was going to fall off and be dragged by the bloody ropes.

Before he could do more than sway and shake his head dizzily, Antoninus reined in his horse and grabbed hold of his right arm. "General, we need to stop," he called out to Maximus, who rode at the head of the column.

"He won't, he's already said so," Valerian said hoarsely. He held onto the saddle cantle as best he could, not wanting to be dragged up the rocky path. His horse, used to a faster pace, jogged and danced until he thought he'd almost prefer being dragged, though. "Edepol," he cursed, losing his grip.

Lucilla rode up on his other side and took hold of his left arm, looking at him with concern in her blue eyes, "Can you do this or shall I make them halt?"

"I can do it," he insisted, breathless, but shortly he lost his grip on the saddle and began to slip off, only the ropes holding him.

"We stop now!" she called out to the line of cavalrymen.

"Keep going," Maximus called, countermanding her. He fixed his men with his sternest gaze and none of them stopped save for Antoninus, who was trying to hold the apparently fainting Valerian on his horse and getting his own mount and himself entangled in the ropes, harness and the furious Augusta. "Damn the woman," he exploded, and rode back to where the three horses danced and stomped, kicking up dust. "I told you we're not stopping," he bit out.

"Well, then," Lucilla said sweetly, "we'll just have to drag poor Valerian to Emerita then, and you'll get no information out of him beyond that you've already gotten. Oh, and you can explain to his commander how you put a wounded officer onto a horse and then dragged him when he fainted and couldn't ride any longer."

"Sometimes I really dislike you," Maximus said to her in a low voice as he rode up to assess the situation first hand. He saw that Valerian was indeed unable to ride farther, and that to drag him as he threatened might kill him. He uttered a few choice words that Lucilla had never heard uttered to her face, then called a halt for the day. "Make camp - our prisoner is too ill to ride farther today." He turned Scarto and rode back past the smiling princess. "I really, really do dislike you."

"I know," she said, smiling.

-------------------------------
Copyright 2001 by wildbearies