by James Mace
Manlius nodded in grim understanding and returned back through the gates. The chief tribune and both aquilifers remained.
Primus turned to Legate Aquila. “I’ll leave you to oversee this. I’m going to find a place to wash and change into some more formal garb before we parlay with the governor of the city.”
“There’s a bathhouse about a quarter mile north of the main road,” Aquila replied.
Primus made ready to leave. He was interrupted by a series of shouts from the growing number of legionaries forming ranks on either side of the city gate.
“Who the fuck is the pretty boy?” one man shouted.
“He’s dressed as a gods’ damned consul!” another added.
“Bloody hell, it’s that faithless twat, Caecina!”
Having bathed, shaved, and donned his best toga complete with consular regalia, Caecina Alienus had not expected to be assailed with insults from the very soldiers he had attempted to defect to. Legionaries had their blades drawn and were roughly handling the lictors who had acted as his escorts. Others were threatening the consul directly.
“Stand down, damn you!” Primus shouted, quickly shoving his way past his soldiers.
They were disgusted at the sight of Caecina.
“A warm welcome, I see,” the former Vitellian general said. His voice was full of sarcasm, though his eyes betrayed his feelings of terror. “Is this how the Flavian armies greet the Consul of Rome?”
“Piss on you!” a legionary spat. “At least those we fought did so with honor. You are a soulless viper!”
“Enough already!” Primus snapped. He was now extremely agitated, especially since his bath had been interrupted.
Soldiers on either side took several steps back, while others unhanded the terrified lictors.
“Thank you,” Caecina said, suddenly humbled as he quickly walked away from the growing columns with Primus.
The Flavian general was once more looking to find the bathhouse in this abandoned, yet rather wealthy district.
As they walked, Caecina asked awkwardly, “What would you have of me? I cannot exactly return to Rome.”
“No, you cannot,” Primus concurred. “Especially since everyone from Vitellius on down to the plebs knows about your attempt to have your army defect to us.”
“That I did, and yet your own soldiers assailed me for it.”
“They respect courage and those who honor their oaths,” Primus replied with a shrug. “What do you expect them to do? Welcome you with open arms?”
“To be honest, that is what I expected,” Caecina said, feeling rather foolish.
“I’m sending you to Vespasian,” the Flavian general stated.
“You are asking me to travel all the way to Judea?”
Primus stopped in his tracks and turned to face him. His expression was hard. “I’m not asking you to do anything. I am telling you that you are going to Vespasian. I have no use for you here. You’d be lucky if you didn’t wake up one morning with your throat cut. And as you have just seen, irate legionaries don’t always honor the inviolability of a Roman consul.”
“It’s just as well,” Caecina remarked. “Vitellius has likely revoked my position. Besides, I was only suffect consul, and my term was set to terminate at the end of this month. To Vespasian I will go and offer supplication.”
“He’ll treat you far better than you would have gotten with my lads or if you’d returned to Rome…ah, here we are, then!”
The bathhouse was smaller, but still had all of the cold, hot, and warm plunge baths. There was even a room where one could be oiled and scraped by slaves. Slaves were the only people around, and they had remained in hiding since their masters fled for the safety of the walls.
“Make ready a bath for me!” Primus shouted, his voice echoing.
“Your pardon, sir,” a middle-aged slave said, coming from one of the back rooms. “The fires are not lit, and it will take some time for the hot waters of the caldarium to be sufficiently heated.”
“So light the fucking thing,” Primus said, his voice louder than he normally would have intended. “The whole damn thing will burn hot soon enough.”
What the general did not know was that a single staff tribune and several legionaries from Legio XIII happened to walk by the bathhouse as he uttered those words. They looked at each other with raised eyebrows. The tribune gave a nod as the men hurried back to their commanding legate. They did not hear Primus’ next words, regarding how his muscles would be better served with a cold plunge first. All they heard was, ‘The whole damn thing will burn hot soon enough.’
Legates Aquila, Lupus, and the rest of the Flavian commanding officers sat astride their mounts at the end of a long stretch of road leading from the city gates. Two large columns of soldiers lined either side of the road. All watched as the eagles and other standards from the two Cremonan Legions were marched out of the gates. They were soon followed by the legates and tribunes who remained mounted. These were followed by the dejected columns of legionaries, all in parade formation, with their centurions marching at the head.
The victorious Flavians at first hurled insults at their defeated adversaries. The Vitellians kept their heads high, maintaining their dignity, and the abuse quickly changed to solemn respect. After all, these were the same soldiers who had called the midnight truce, complete with food and drink for their enemies.
At the end of the long walk, a half mile from the gates, the standards were planted behind the line of Flavian officers. The aquilifers and signifiers then stripped out of their armor, which was laid in a pile off to one side. As each cohort reached the end of the walk, they drew their blades, saluted the Flavians, and laid them off to the opposite side of their armor.
“They were worthy adversaries,” Chief Tribune Messalla said. He then added thoughtfully, “I will be glad when we can welcome them back as our brothers.”
“There are a few things that need to happen first,” Aquila remarked.
It took the better part of two hours for the Vitellian Legions to march out of the city and lay down their arms. As soon as each cohort was disarmed, they were marched to the Flavian camp several miles up the road. As the defeated soldiers had given their vow not to flee or attempt to renew hostilities, only a handful of escorts were sent with each cohort. Last to come out of the city were the wounded. Though most of the more badly injured had been captured before they could reach the city, there were still between two and three hundred that were carried out on oxcarts or who attempted to walk, held up by their mates. These men made their way past the line of Flavian officers, offering neither salute nor acknowledgment. The victorious legionaries looked to their commanders as they milled about.
“Time for Cremona to pay for its treachery,” a voice was heard saying, from the ranks.
“Bastards thought they could humiliate us, now it’s time for retribution,” another muttered.
People were slowly emerging from the city, curiosity and confinement to its walls finally getting the best of them. The throngs of soldiers varied in their demeanor between indifferent and hostile. The harshest reactions came naturally from those of Thirteenth Gemina.
“General Aquila!” a tribune shouted, as he rushed over to his commanding legate.
“What is it?”
“It would seem General Primus has given his authorization to sack the city.”
“What do you mean ‘it would seem’?” the legate asked, his brow scrunched in contemplation.
“His exact words were, ‘the whole damn thing will burn hot soon enough’ ,” the tribune explained.
“That’s good enough for us, sir!” a nearby centurion shouted.
The men in the ranks were getting extremely agitated, and neither lack of sleep nor extreme fatigue could quell their rising lust for vengeance.
Aquila, who was of the same mind as his soldiers, nodded in concurrence. He drew his spatha and addressed the mob. “Legions of Vespasian! The City of Cremona has committed acts of
both treason and sedition against you. Its people aided and even fought beside the enemy, thereby forfeiting their rights as citizens of the empire. The city is yours, my brothers!”
This was met with a voracious shouts of triumph and rage. The humiliation the people had visited upon Thirteenth Gemina would be repaid in fire and bloodshed. The other Flavian legions, anxious for plunder, echoed the calls for Cremona’s destruction. People screamed in horror as swords were drawn and the victorious soldiers attacked them with an unholy frenzy. There was no time to flee nor to attempt to close the gates.
Within moments, scores, then hundreds, and finally thousands of legionaries and auxiliaries spilled into the large city. The women were treated with exceptional cruelty. They had not only provided food for their enemies, many had taken up arms and fought beside the Vitellians during the previous night’s battle. The governing mayor of the city stumbled from the mass of terrified citizens who were being beaten and in some cases killed by the rampaging mob.
“What is the meaning of this?” he shrieked, as he came upon General Aquila. “Why, why are you doing this?”
“It is the price Cremona must pay for its folly,” Aquila said, his eyes boring into the man.
“Who are you?” the mayor asked, his voice venomous. “What pit of Hades did you crawl out of?”
The legate dismounted his horse, his sword drawn. He stood almost nose-to-nose with the despondent magistrate for a brief moment, then plunged his blade into the man’s guts. The mayor gasped as Aquila grabbed him roughly by the hair.
“Revenge is my name,” he hissed into the man’s ear before slashing him across the throat.
The enraged legions didn’t know that not every Vitellian soldier had dutifully surrendered. There were many hundreds still in hiding within the city’s walls. Not because they wished to continue to fight, though. Because they knew Cremona was for the sack, they wished to take part in the looting of spoils. They had discarded their shields, which was the only means of identifying them as Vitellians. Still wearing the armor and helmets of imperial soldiers, they would be lost among the masses with complete autonomy to brutalize and steal from the very citizens they were supposed to defend.
All the while, Marcus Antonius Primus, the commander-in-chief of Vespasian’s army, soaked his tired and battered body in the frigid waters of the bathhouse’s cold plunge. It would be some time before he finished his bath, shave, and a massage given by the terrified slaves of the facility. His manservant brought him his finest toga. He changed so he could be appropriately dressed when he met with the city’s governing council. Little did he know, the mayor of Cremona was dead and most of the councilmen either cowering in their homes or fled from the city. Primus’ brutally fought triumph was now being tarnished by the horrific and disgraceful conduct of his victorious army.
Chapter XX: Brothers in Death
Flavian camp, outside of Cremona
Midafternoon
***
Six miles from the city, the Flavian camp was oblivious to the profane destruction being wrought on Cremona. Few would have given the city much sympathy, not even the Vitellian prisoners. All had speculated that the Flavians would unleash their wrath upon the populace, especially the vengeful Legio XIII. Many of the soldiers who now milled about aimlessly, waiting for word from their officers regarding the surrender, lamented that they had not stayed to take part in the looting with their more adventurous friends.
The Flavians who had remained at the camp were more concerned about taking care of the vast numbers of wounded, while sorting out the living from the dead. The Vitellians offered to assist them, as many of the fallen were their own soldiers. The long caravan of wagons bearing the hospital tents had arrived, along with scores of surgeons, medics, and civilian volunteers from Bedriacum. It was they who would deal with the terrible suffering that came in the aftermath of every battle.
In all, each side had lost between eight hundred and a thousand dead, with four to five times as many wounded. And with the Vitellians having surrendered, it was left to the victorious Flavians to care for all the casualties left on the field. Unlike the Vitellians, who had left the defeated Othonians where they fell, the Flavians felt duty-bound to care for all of their wounded countrymen. They had also captured nearly two thousand prisoners during the night, including those that surrendered to Centurion Galeo and the Seventh Claudia’s reserve cohorts. Now the outskirts of the camp swelled with the many thousands of men captured at the Vitellian camp, while the cohorts from Cremona slowly began to arrive.
Gaius was beyond exhausted, yet he was unable to sleep, so great was the pain in his arm. His left hand clutched his right wrist and held it against his stomach. That seemed to be the only way to keep his arm still. The wound to his leg was also painful, the crude bandage saturated with coagulated blood.
“Fifteen dead,” he overheard Centurion Galeo say. “Including the seven we lost destroying those Vitellian siege engines. Another forty were wounded.”
“We marched from Bedriacum with just under four hundred men in the ranks,” another centurion noted. “And we weren’t even at the heart of the fighting.”
That so many of their soldiers had fallen was a somber reminder of just how bitter the struggle had been.
Casualties for both armies were appalling, though they could have conceivably been much worse. The armor worn by legionaries offered them substantial protection. As such, there were fewer injures to the chest or upper abdomen on the wounded. Most of the dead had been struck in the exposed neck, lower abdomen, groin, or thigh. The bombardment from the Vitellian catapult and ballistae had wreaked exceptional havoc on the Seventh Gemina Legion.
Unsurprisingly, Gaius had to wait some time to be seen. With the surgeons overwhelmed by the more gravely wounded, scores of medics were dispersed to do what they could for the rest. It was a Syrian aid-man who finally came to see the optio. The man looked very young with a few days of stubble covering his otherwise boyish face.
“Nature of your injuries?” the man asked, as he knelt beside Gaius.
“Ballista shot to the arm,” the optio said, through gritted teeth. He clutched his arm close to his body and nodded to his leg. “And a nice little gouge, courtesy of a shattered onager.”
The medic took hold of his arm, causing Gaius to fight back the tears of pain. The whole of his upper arm was almost completely purple with a hideous scraping gash covering the outside of his bicep and triceps. The medic was quick yet thorough. He gently grabbed at various parts of the arm, working it through its normal range of motion. It was excruciating. Bolts of pain shot through Gaius’ entire body. He was now sweating profusely, his face pale.
“From the looks of it, it does not appear to be broken,” the Syrian man noted. “However, the bone has been severely traumatized. The muscles and tendons have taken some severe damage as well.”
“I suppose I’m fortunate it didn’t take my arm completely off,” the optio said, thinking back to the poor legionary who’d been decapitated by the same shot. Gaius was breathing rapidly, despite his effort to remain composed.
“Had it struck a couple inches to the right, we would not be having this conversation,” the medic replied bluntly. “Your arm would have been ripped off and carried fifty feet from your body. You would have bled to death within minutes. Now, we need to get you out of your armor. I need you to sit upright.”
Gaius did as he was told, though he was so exhausted it took every ounce of his strength to sit up completely.
The medic then straightened his arm out to the side. “Can you undo the ties on your armor?”
With his left hand, Gaius struggled to unlace the six sets of leather ties that held the segmented plates across his torso. It was tedious, and the pain in his arm was made worse by the medic holding it out. He jerked on the leather strap and undid the buckle that held the chest plates together. His armor fell off his left arm, while the medic unstrapped the right chest plate from the torso, allowing the optio�
��s armor to collapse to the ground.
“Place your right hand up on your left shoulder,” he directed. As Gaius did so, the man took a wide swath of cloth and wrapped it around his arm and chest, creating a sling for his stricken limb. “You won’t be using this arm for quite a while. The muscle and tendons should heal over time. Whether or not you regain full usage will depend on the extent of the damage done.”
“How long?” Gaius asked.
“A couple of months, maybe more. All depends on your body’s natural constitution. I would say that if you have not regained full use of it within six months, then you never will. Now, let’s take a look at your leg.”
Gaius bit the inside of his cheek as the rag was pulled from the gash. The clotted blood caused it to stick and tear the wound open afresh.
“They got you pretty deep,” the Syrian said, as he dabbed at the gash. “We need to wash this out and stitch it up. I’ve got some dried herbs that should prevent infection provided you don’t rip it open again.”
He poured water on and around the wound, which he quickly wiped away with a rag. He squeezed around the injury, draining out the water, blood, and other fluids. He then held the gash closed with one hand and with a brass needle began to stitch the torn flesh together.
“Damn it all,” Gaius said, the sharp poking for the moment hurting even more than his arm. “What are you using, a spike for sewing leather tarps?”
“Now that you mention it,” the medic replied with a macabre chuckle. He then wrapped a fresh bandage around the injured leg. “There you are. Don’t be catching gangrene and you’ll be able to walk within a month or so.”
The man excused himself and quickly moved to the next wounded man; a legionary with a hideous gash across his neck. That the soldier had not already bled to death meant the wound was not fatal unless infection set in. The Syrian aid-man said as much.
Gaius slowly worked his way up to his knees, doing everything he could to not jar his bad arm or bend his injured leg. He picked up his scabbarded gladius. He had no idea what he should do with his armor and helmet, so he simply left them where they were. He doubted anyone would pilfer them; and even if they did, he did not care at the moment. His shield was lying on the ground somewhere near the base of the hill. At least that had his name inscribed on the inside! The blinding pain had subsided to a dull, very pronounced ache. Having his arm wrapped against his body did much to help his mobility, though his leg was stiff and refused to work properly.
