Soldier of Rome: The Last Campaign (The Artorian Chronicles) by James Mace Page B

that any further annexations would prove too cumbersome to administer.
    By contrast, t he lands to the south had seen much turmoil in Alaric’s absence, with the numerous tribes in a near-constant state of warfare. He had hear rumor while in Gaul that the kingdom of the Atrebates 2 had been conquered the year prior by the Catuvellauni, led by their king, Togodumnus and his brother, Caratacus. Indeed, the impacted dirt road Alaric traveled took him past the burned out remains of the Atrebates’ king, Verica’s former stronghold. The charred ruins had been left as a reminder of what happened to those who opposed Caratacus. Roman merchants had once held substantial trade relations with the kingdom, which was rich in silver and tin. As Caratacus detested the foreign purveyors, they had either fled or been driven off.
    “Every corner of the world is savage and unforgiving,” Alaric noted as he pulled his cloak close around him. He had been exposed to brutality and death at a young age, when his village in Germania was destroyed by the Roman Army and the inhabitants massacred. As far as he knew, he and his mother, Milla, were the only survivors. He had not seen his mother in many years, and he hoped she was well.
    During his years in both Rome and the east, he had witnessed similar cruelties that men seemed to inflict upon each other with reckless abandon. Men killed to gain power, as well as for sport. Alaric found it hypocritical that the Romans would refer to certain races as barbaric , whilst forcing men, women, and beasts to brutally slay each other for the amusement of the mob in vast arenas. In this sense, he found civilization to be, at best, a relative term, subject to one’s own interpretation. At worst, it was an agreed upon fiction.
     
    There was one who had tried to teach a different way of thinking; the way of love and compassion for all, even one’s bitterest enemies. The man had been a teacher from the city of Nazareth in Judea. Alaric’s lifelong struggle to reconcile himself with the Romans who had destroyed his people led him to listen to the Nazarene’s teachings voraciously. And yet even this man of divine peace had met an ignominious and ghastly end. Betrayed by his own people, he was subjected to a savage scourging before he met his end via the crucifix. To be fair, Alaric knew that the blaming of the entire Jewish people for this noble man’s death was short-sighted and naïve. In reality, it had only been members of the Jewish religious leaders, the Sanhedrin, who had called for the Nazarene’s execution. The common people had loved him, and many still professed to follow his teachings. There were even those who professed that the teacher had risen from the dead. Whatever the truth or myth of these beliefs, even the Romans, who never shied from unleashing their cruelest of punishments, had been extremely reluctant to carry out the Nazarene’s execution.
    These events had left Alaric even more lost and confused. He spent the next eight years wandering the east, sometimes with friends and disciples of the Nazarene, other times alone. When the coin he had accumulated during his years as a mariner started to run low, he decided it was time to leave the east. Judea was every bit as volatile when he left as when he’d arrived, and he secretly wondered if the area would ever know peace. His months-long journey had at last returned him to the shores of the one place he had thought of as ‘home’. And yet, he found he was still searching, his years of experience providing more questions than answers.
    He kept to himself, traveling with his hood over his head whether the weather was fair or foul. No one bothered him, not even the occasional band of armed men who he assumed were part of King Caratacus’ personal guard. A week after passing through the occupied remnants of the Atrebates kingdom, he at last reached the northern lands that had been his boyhood home, ever since he and his mother fled the