A Note on the Chapter Title: Castor and Pollux (known as Polydeuces to the Greeks) were Gods and twin brothers who were almost always worshiped together.
Castor and Pollux
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"We've crushed them, General, simply crushed them."
Hiei grunted rudely. "We lost the queen," he responded after a moment, knowing Butajiri would want more than a snort.
Butajiri sneered, the effect repulsive on the stocky jowls of his face. He and Hiei began to discuss how best to select the most beautiful captives from the throngs of new slaves being dragged out of the smoke blanketing Manduessedum, Hiei's mind barely bent to the problem.
Butajiri was a typical Roman Governor: cruel, avaricious, self-indulgent, he took this post away from Rome for a few years only to grow fat on the meat of the Britons. It was a usual practice. Roman moneylenders were quick to lend to nobles likely to be given a province, since only the just and fair-minded, which were few in the aristocracy, returned to Rome with a mere twice their original revenue. If a nobleman was on the cusp of bankruptcy, it was traditional to ask for and be given a province, as Hiei well knew from the sheer number of times his father had had to make that humiliating request. Even an Emperor like Karasu would grant such a thing, so long as the noble was in his favor. If he were not, then the Emperor could refuse, which was a sign that there was no hope of mollifying him. You were a walking corpse already.
As for Hiei's part, he knew why Butajiri in particular had been sent to Britannia. Along with the three spies who couldn't be expelled from Hiei's personal entourage, Butajiri was sent to watch Hiei, to account to the Emperor Hiei's doings, one way or another. If Hiei wasn't careful, Butajiri could use his reports to play up victories until the Emperor was jealous; he could send unpatriotic conversations, true or fabricated, so the Emperor became convinced Hiei was disloyal; he could even, in a pinch, pretend that Hiei had political interests in the power games played back at Rome that could easily get Hiei killed. There were a thousand things Butajiri could do, so it paid for the normally monosyllabic General to make an effort, and keep Butajiri happy.
In off moments, when Butajiri was creeping in with his retinue after a battle had gone well, swelled up with the vicarious goodwill of the men, Hiei pitied the ugly aristocrat. Butajiri enjoyed the depravities of the Emperor Karasu's court to the fullest, which made Hiei reel with distaste, but he'd enjoyed them too well. Soon, Emperor Karasu, ever paranoid, would decide Butajiri was a threat or an annoyance, and on that day the man would face an ignoble death. It had happened countless times before. Beyond the small circle of the Emperor's trusted associates, those who showed themselves to be too talented, too rapturous, too extreme, too unbending, or in excess of any characteristic that the Emperor disliked, quickly found their bodies carted away from the bottom of the Tarpeian Rock, execution ground for traitors, and their families in disgrace.
Hiei despised Butajiri's idiocy and dissolute lifestyle, but he didn't envy him his approaching death. Butajiri hadn't realized yet; he would soon. Hiei just hoped that the waddling toad had that particular epiphany well after he made his report to the Emperor on Hiei. The last thing the General needed was Butajiri reporting with the hope of ingratiating himself with their reigning monarch, or of distracting the Emperor's attention from Butajiri to Hiei himself.
Idly, the conversation came to a conclusion, Butajiri rubbing his meaty hands in joy and Hiei stiff and unresponsive. Soon, runners were sent to spread the word through the centurions (who would quickly spread it through the rank and file) that fat pouches of silver awaited any man who found and presented a slave of uncommon beauty, fit for the Emperor's bed.
The man holding Kurama looked smug, despite the thrice-bitten skin of his hands (Kurama's work) and the bruises from his quarrel with the other Roman soldiers. Kurama was determined to ignore him. His eyes, beyond his control, fixed on Shuuichi, who huddled in sight with a man fastening manacles to his wrists and a collar to his neck. The boy glanced continuously back at his brother, eyes bright with the tears that dribbled down his already salt-stained cheeks.
Shuuichi sniffed, and Kurama winced in sympathy when the man fixing the collar on, his task completed, boxed the little boy's ears. Another child behind Shuuichi was attached via his manacles to the back of Shuuichi's collar, forming a metal version of the ropes that had been used to pacify the two brothers earlier. Kurama's green eyes closed momentarily, in pain and heartache. He was suspicious, but he couldn't, no matter how he puzzled, understand what had happened.
When Shuuichi and he were dragged through the battered ruins of the eastern cart gate, a man in better gear than his three captors had stopped and told them something. The three had saluted, convincing Kurama they were addressing one of their putrid officers, and then immediately afterward the legionary who stood beside Kurama now, his thick brows lowering in thought, had turned and run his eyes over Kurama speculatively in a way Kurama hadn't liked. The three men had fought, exchanging blows, and now here Kurama stood, in a long line of other soldiers with one, two, or even three captives, most of the captives women and good-looking and most of the soldiers sullen and greedy.
Kurama stared imperiously around the long, sloping hill the queue climbed, blood and the corpses of tribesmen turning the soil to mud, the legionaries already cleared and buried. The grass was gone, horses and carts and stomping boots having ground the sacred earth down, saturated and crushed it with Roman arrogance. Artio will punish them for their pride, Kurama thought. He counseled himself to let the capricious forest goddess do her work with the divine timing the Druids so often bemoaned. She had not come yet, however, to minister to her chosen people, and Kurama grew impatient; and Camulos, the war god, had forsaken the Britons entirely. Or been bested by the Roman Gods, Kurama added disloyally. Kurama knew their strange names from the tongues of travelers, but he could not pronounce them.
All around him soldiers marched with the sun glinting on their armor, captives shrieked and fell to the mud, corpses lay in congealed blood, the world transformed into a mad raucous thing. He debated how he would obtain the gold to offer at a sanctuary, running fantasies of giving every Roman he saw to the Druids for sacrifice, thus appeasing the Gods with the blood he himself had not spilt for his clan. He was so entranced by it the line bled away, and he was at the top before he knew it.
He looked forward, his steady gaze meeting bitter red eyes that held his caustically. When Kurama didn't look away after a moment, the strangely petite man seated before him—his hard but oddly childish face clean-shaven, with black hair (but for a curling white starburst in the front) spiked into a tumble above his head—snorted in something that seemed like approval. The corpulent bastard seated next to him, his fingers dripping with jeweled rings, addressed the brutish legionary who had led Kurama here excitedly.
Kurama fought when they started stripping his clothes off with hands and daggers, but curiously, they didn't strike him. The wind was chill once he was naked and goosebumped before them, cold air whistling around him with no barrier. He was too frigid to struggle again when they turned him this way and that, fondled him and bent him over, examined his teeth as though he were a horse for market. He didn't look into their eyes. He didn't want to see the possessive stares, the sneers. He knew well enough that these Roman pigs viewed him as something far less than a soon-to-be man. For a heartbreaking moment, Kurama realized that as a slave in the land of the Romans, he and Shuuichi may never have the rites that inducted a boy to the tribe as a man and warrior, or craftsman. For Kurama, the rites were but a season away.
The fat one grinned, showing gold teeth, and nodded. Without being given back his clothes, Kurama was led away between two soldiers with gruff grips on his arms, naked and half-frozen. He looked over his shoulder one last time to see Shuuichi, the boy's round face turned up and his eyes fixed on the top of this hill: on Kurama. Shuuichi watched his brother even as the chain line began to move, both running starving eyes over each other with the absolute knowledge that this might be the last time they ever laid eyes on their brother again.
Glossary:
Butajiri was a typical Roman Governor – This is historically accurate, for the most part. At one sensational trial, Cicero rebuked in his courtroom orations (he was an Ancient Roman statesman, writer and lawyer, a contemporary of Julius Caesar) during the period of Roman history right before this, the Late Republic, those who used their governorship to gain gross profits (which, of course, most of them did). The trial I'm speaking of ended with one noble governor convicted for his abuses, monetary and otherwise, of the men and women of his province to fill his own pockets. Of course, he stepped over the line in a province rich enough to hire Cicero, the best attorney of his time, and happened to be particularly thick about hiding his deceptions. Most governors who engaged in similar widespread corruptions were never prosecuted, or never prosecuted successfully. Most historical evidence points to the idea that corruption was the rule in provinces (and many other governmental institutions in Rome), not the exception.
Tarpeian Rock – The execution ground for traitors, a truly ignoble place to meet one's death, this was a giant cliff which a "traitor" (who, through the history of Rome, could just as easily be someone who had soured an Emperor's temper) was tossed off of, onto the jagged rocks far below.
Centurions – "A professional officer of the Roman army," according to Wikipedia. Most commanded 83 men.
Artio – "Bear," a Celtic forest goddess.
Camulos – A war god worshipped in Ancient Britannia and Ancient Gaul (England and France, respectively).
Druids/Gold/Sacrifices/Sanctuaries – In Ancient Britannia and Gaul, Druidism was the religion followed, and it had little to do with what one might call "neo-druidism", and the ideas of druids people carry today. That said, I can't go into the full religion in this footnote. There were actually sacred groves, which we know little about; but there were also permanent sanctuaries, including ones where gold was given and/or human sacrifices were carried out, depending on the sanctuary. And to touch the gold of, let alone steal from, a sanctuary was something no Gallic or Briton man, woman or child would ever do, as Caesar commented.
The rites of manhood – Modern historians don't know too too much about these rites, but we do know they existed, and were probably different from tribe to tribe.
To Learn More:
If you'd like to know more about the time period, the two books I'm using for Celtic reference are "The World of the Celts" by Simon James, and "The Ancient Celts," by Barry Cunliffe. For Roman times, I'm using a lot of historical sources that would probably bore you guys to death (including Caesar's "Gallic Wars," Cicero's "On Divination, On Friendship, On Old Age, " Marcus Aurelius' "Meditations," selections from works on Roman epigraphy [the study of inscriptions], and Suetonius, Polybius, Tacitus, Sallust, and Livy, as well as many others of the ancient Roman historians). I also went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and looked at the room of Augustus's house, and no, this wasn't for a class, this was for the story (I'm crazy), and of course went and saw some Ancient Roman statues and such there, and coins in a local museum that actually let me touch them, which was cool. I've also been watching Rome, and reading some modern historical works (like Anthony Everitt's "Cicero," "Spartacus and the Slave Wars: A Brief History with Documents," and "Weapon: A Visual History of Arms and Armor") and novels about Ancient Rome to see how others do it (including "Roma," by Steven Saylor, "The Gods of War," by Conn Iggulden, and "Imperium," by Robert Harris). If you just like the Ancient World in general, I suggest the book "The Persian Boy," by Mary Renault. It's Ancient Persia/Greece, not Ancient Rome/Gaul/Britannia, but it's still an amazing book. I've also heard good things about "I, Claudius" and "The October Horse" et al. by Colleen McCullough, both of which I'm about to start reading.
Thanks for reading all of this! You rock.