Hammer of Rome

by Douglas Jackson

  A legion on the march was an astonishing sight, even for one who’d seen it so many times, squirming across the ground like a giant centipede that only discipline, relentless industry and the brutal training of many years maintained as a single entity. In Valerius’s mind the centipede’s feelers were the scouts and cavalry patrols who ranged ahead and on the flanks of the long, snaking column, and the engineers who would forge ahead to decide the site of the next camp. Two cohorts of auxiliary infantry made up the head of the beast. In their midst marched Valerius’s headquarters section and his personal guard, the aquilifer’s party, bearing the glittering eagle standard, and the imaginifer who carried the Emperor’s image. The body consisted of close to five thousand legionaries, the unit’s core of heavy infantry, divided into ten cohorts. A cohort was the legion’s tactical heart, large enough to make a difference in any battle situation, but flexible enough to be used in part or in whole. The arithmetic of a cohort was simple. Eight men made up a contubernium, who shared a tent on campaign or a barrack block in the fort. Ten contubernia made up a century and six centuries a cohort. Only the elite First cohort defied this rule, consisting of five double-strength centuries: eight hundred men. In Valerius’s experience it was unusual for a legion to march so close to a full complement of soldiers, but Agricola had agreed he could use replacements from the Second Augusta at Isca to fill the gaps in his ranks. A full cohort of that legion had taken over garrison duties at Eboracum under the command of Valerius’s nominal deputy, a senior military tribune for whom he had little use, but with too many friends in high places to be replaced.

  The centipede’s tail consisted of the long column of baggage wagons and mules carrying everything eight thousand soldiers needed to survive – and to fight: flour, dried meat, olive oil and wine for the legionaries and auxiliaries; sacks of fodder for hundreds of horses and oxen; cooking pots and bread ovens; thousands of spare pila, the weighted javelins that would break a charge of bare-chested barbarians in an instant; ballistae and scorpio catapults, the dreaded ‘shield-splitters’ designed to cause havoc and dismay; pre-prepared timber for bridges; and forges and anvils for the armourers. Behind them came the rearguard, another two cohorts of auxiliaries. If Valerius cared to watch his legion pass by from nose to tail he would be here for more than an hour.

  ‘Riders approaching.’ Cornelius Felix, the commander of his escort, broke his revery. There was little urgency in the decurion’s tone. No enemy horseman could have penetrated the cavalry screen undetected.

  ‘It’s Arafa.’ Shabolz, the former Pannonian auxiliary, had the best eyes of any of them. Valerius had inherited the troops of his guard from his short time as legatus iuridicus. Eight cavalrymen from each of Britannia’s four legions, hand-picked for all the wrong reasons. A motley band of misfits, they’d started out ready to spill each other’s guts, but the balefire of battle had tested and moulded them. Valerius was happy to call them comrades, and in some cases friends. Shabolz was the best of them, a stocky Pannonian with a face carved from granite and a sidelock hanging from beneath his helmet that no dress regulation would compel him to remove. Originally there had been five Pannonians, but only three survived Agricola’s invasion of Mona.

  Valerius smiled. Arafa meant ‘giant’, but the man who answered to the name was Gaius Rufus, a Roman who lived as a Celt and, if he wasn’t making the story up, the result of a union between one of the Emperor Caligula’s slaves and the midget dancer responsible for his tiny stature.

  From a distance the diminutive figure looked ridiculous perched on a full-sized Roman cavalry mount, but Rufus occupied the four-pronged saddle with all the ease and comfort of an emperor sitting on his throne. He was the legion’s chief scout and a man who could range extraordinary distances into enemy territory. Valerius had sent him on a mission two days earlier. He could tell the moment he met Rufus’s eyes it had been a success.

  ‘I have him, lord,’ the little man grinned.

  ‘Where?’ Valerius demanded.

  ‘Patience, favoured of the gods.’ Rufus’s gimlet eyes glinted. ‘King Guiderius has two problems. The first is that his army, like his tribe, is a patchwork of loyalties. They’re also hungry. The last harvest was a poor one and the next is half a year away. For a strong king that wouldn’t matter, but Guiderius is only king because none of the other candidates who want independence from Rome could raise the support to get rid of him. He knows he can only afford to attack you if everything favours him, or his army will melt away like the last snow of springtime. King Guiderius is not a confident man. He has heard about the fate of the Ordovices. That’s why he’s sought sanctuary in the north.’

  ‘Thank you for the history lesson, but I still need to know where.’

  Rufus dropped from his horse and used his foot to clear a space in the dirt. He drew his knife and bent over the patch of earth. Valerius dismounted to crouch beside him. ‘We’re here, and these are the mountains.’ Rufus scraped a wavy line up the centre of the patch. He drew another line up the east side of the mountains and stabbed the point of his knife into the earth. ‘Here. The original Brigante seat of kings, the northern stronghold of Queen Cartimandua, and the tribe’s traditional sanctuary.’

  ‘How far is it?’

  ‘For the legion? A long day on the road, but a prudent man would take two.’

  Valerius studied the improvised map. ‘Agricola must know about this.’

  Agricola summoned the commanders of his legions as soon as Valerius arrived saddle-sore and weary at the temporary camp of the Twentieth. Valerius experienced a twinge of unease as he entered the governor’s pavilion. His relationship with the proconsul of Britannia was more complex than he cared to admit. Even Tabitha wasn’t aware of the full extent of his concerns. Agricola had originally greeted his new legatus iuridicus with a wariness that belied their previous service together; polite enough, but cold, offhand and just the right side of bad manners. The way he’d manoeuvred Valerius into command of the Ninth reeked of intrigue and conspiracy, and the passing of Valerius’s predecessor something worse. Of course, the lack of welcome could be excused by the strain of his responsibilities. Britannia was a notoriously difficult province from which to prise a profit.

  Agricola and two other men occupied the tent. The governor rose to welcome Valerius, followed by his companions. An amused smile flickered on thin lips, but didn’t quite reach the steady grey eyes that always seemed to contain an element of question. A lawyer’s eyes that saw everything, but took nothing at face value. Stockily built and of middle height, the governor wore his greying hair cropped short in a vain attempt to disguise its sparseness, and his brow still bore the impression where his helmet had sat not so long before.

  ‘Verrens.’ Valerius acknowledged the greeting of a dark, saturnine man in his early fifties with hair of a jet black that had nothing to do with nature. Tiberius Julius Ursus, legate of the Twentieth legion. If the rumours were correct his dealings with Agricola were even more strained than Valerius’s. Ursus reached out a hand before withdrawing it in a nervous flutter as he remembered Valerius’s wooden fist.

  ‘Valerius.’ The youngest of the three, plump and relaxed, with the face of a well-fed cherub, recognized the newcomer’s presence with an inclination of the head and a smile that came as a surprise. Herenius Polio was a man with a bloodline that stretched back as far as Romulus. He commanded the Second Adiutrix and had previously treated Valerius with the detached condescension he maintained with all new men, even Agricola. Valerius returned the smile, but wondered what had brought about the sudden change.

  Between them, Ursus, Polio and Valerius commanded three of Britannia’s four legions, which, with their associated auxiliary units, combined the power of close to thirty thousand of the most disciplined and well-armed soldiers the world had ever seen. As long as Agricola had their support, he wielded a weapon so potent he was capable of marching on Rome with a fair degree of success.

  Naturally, Vespasian and the Palatium,
the great bureaucracy which ran the Empire’s affairs, ensured that none of his commanders could fully trust the others. Ursus was Vespasian’s man, hand and heart, and had served under the Emperor as a sixteen-year-old tribune with the Second Augusta as far back as the invasion. Valerius was known to be a client of Titus, heir to the purple, a newly appointed patrician whose influence, none the less, could only grow. Polio held his rank thanks to a combination of aristocratic alliances and his father’s friends in the Senate, but he commanded a legion formed and constituted by the Emperor from the marines of the Ravenna fleet and known for their fierce loyalty to him.

  ‘The scout, Gais Rufus,’ Agricola’s aide announced.

  ‘Send him in.’

  Gaius Rufus appeared a few moments later, entering the tent with a bow-legged cavalryman’s swagger that might have looked incongruous on the small man, but that he managed to carry off like a Parthian Invincible. His eyes were red-rimmed and sunk deep with exhaustion, but they contained a twinkle that hinted he found his situation ripe for self-mockery.

  ‘Bring the scout wine,’ Agricola called to a hovering servant. Rufus accepted the silver cup and drained the contents in a single swallow. He sighed contentedly and wiped the back of his hand across his lips with a nod of thanks.

  ‘Well?’ The governor’s voice was tight with anticipation.

  ‘They call it Brynmochdar, lord, the Badger Hill,’ Rufus said. ‘It is a place associated with Guiderius’s mother, Cartimandua, the Brigantes’ greatest queen. I arrived in darkness and took refuge on a rise to the south I knew would provide a fine view of the fort when the sun rose. As I waited, I could hear the sound of shouting in the distance and see what looked like a thousand fireflies on the hill opposite.’ He drew a long breath. ‘They are there, lord.’

  ‘How many?’ Agricola demanded.

  ‘Enough to be turning what I remember as a modest defensive position into one of the largest fortresses I have ever seen.’

  ‘Impossible,’ Ursus scoffed.

  ‘Have you seen Maidun, lord?’ The scout turned to him. ‘The stronghold of the Durotriges where they made their last stand against our very own Caesar and the Second Augusta. Forgive me, of course you have, for you marched with him. Well, Brynmochdar is larger still, though the hill is not so steep, the walls so tall, nor the ditches deep.’

  ‘How much work have they done?’ Valerius had also seen Maidun and he’d wondered that even a Roman legion could take it.

  ‘From what I could see, lord, they’re concentrating their efforts on lengthening the line of ditches to enclose the hill. At the moment it’s just a few feet deep with a low mound behind.’

  ‘So we need to act quickly.’ Valerius turned to Agricola.

  ‘Yes,’ the governor agreed. ‘Before they have a chance to deepen the ditches and build a palisade.’ Valerius saw a calculating look cross his face and felt a touch of unease. ‘You should return to your legion, legate, and march north immediately. I will give you a vexillatio of two cohorts of the Twentieth to strengthen your force.’ Ursus protested, but Agricola waved him aside. ‘And I will personally join you at the Hill of Badgers for the siege.’

  Valerius’s heart sank as Rufus shot him a wry smile. His instinct had been right. Agricola couldn’t resist the lure of glory. His beloved Twentieth would have the battle honour Brynmochdar sewn upon their pennants and any victory would be the victory of Gnaeus Julius Agricola.

  ‘There is something else, lord,’ Rufus interrupted. ‘I captured a stray who thought to shirk the work at the camp, and put him to the question. He said King Guiderius’s force is as numerous as grains of sand upon a beach and he would like nothing better than for us to attack him. The king has also acquired new allies.’

  ‘New allies?’ Valerius exchanged a glance with Agricola. Which of the tribes of southern Britannia would be foolish enough to ally themselves with a rebel who had no chance of success?

  ‘He has been joined at Brynmochdar by a prince of the northern Celts, a champion of his tribe, along with a hundred of his greatest warriors. My Brigante said he is a giant, tall as a rowan and broad as a four-wheel cart. The sword he carries is as long as a chariot’s centre pole and he can split an armoured man in two with a single blow.’

  ‘Valerius.’ Agricola was out of his seat and his fingers closed on Valerius’s left arm, his eyes glittering. ‘You must take him for me. Take him alive. This swordsman will be our gift to the Emperor.’ Beyond the governor’s shoulder Valerius saw Polio raise a sardonic eyebrow at the word our. ‘He will be paraded through Rome for the eternal glory of Britannia’s legions and suffer the fate of Vercingetorix the Gaul in the depths of the carcer. Alive, Valerius. I want him alive.’

  Valerius nodded, not trusting himself to speak, remembering the man who had delivered Vercingetorix to Rome. Gaius Julius Caesar had proclaimed himself dictator and founded an empire. Just how high did Agricola’s ambitions soar?

  III

  The two kings stood at the centre of what appeared to be a giant ants’ nest. On every side men, women and children burrowed to dig or deepen ditches, gathered wood for palisades and quarried stone to build revetments where the ditches threatened to collapse, or to create paths through the bogs. Every tree of any size had been felled to be part of the defences and thorn bushes torn up to make the ditches more difficult to cross. Other tribesfolk carried sacks of salted meat, oatmeal and dried apples while still more drove individual cows, small herds of hardy brown sheep and squealing families of pigs into enclosures in the centre of the giant compound, where they mingled, moaning and jostling and making the air shimmer with the warmth from their reeking manure.

  Anything that could be used as a weapon had been gathered from the surrounding area. The people had worked through the night and all the previous day in an attempt to complete the defences and provisioning of the fort in time. Yet Cathal noted they were fewer now than yesterday. Warriors preferred to fight and drink rather than dig, but still more feared what would happen to their families when the Romans came. An entire tribe had disappeared during the night with all its supplies.

  It would have been difficult to find a greater contrast between two men. Guiderius, short and slight, with light brown hair that tumbled to his shoulders, had sad, wide-set blue eyes, a wispy beard and soft, almost feminine downturned lips. He wore a tunic and trews of finespun emerald cloth, with a chain of gold links at his waist and a heavy gold torc at his neck. In contrast, Cathal would have stood head and shoulders above most men and he loomed over Guiderius like a mountain crag. A chest like an ale barrel forced his tunic of rough, undyed wool apart at the neck and plaid trews encased his long legs to calves as massive as another man’s thighs. Wild, raven hair chopped short at the brow and sides hung long at his back, and the narrow dark eyes took in and evaluated everything. A nose like a Celtic battle axe jutted above long moustaches that hung to his chin, and he had a rearing horse tattooed in blue on each cheek. What truly marked him, apart from his scale, was the sword he wore strapped to his back.

  Taller than the man standing at his side, it had a two-handed grip bound in soft leather and fixed with spun gold and a blade as wide as a man’s hand. Only Cathal could wield it. He called the sword Ghost Bane, because if a man looked closely enough the spirits of the eight strips of iron that created it were visible in the polished blade. The gold arm rings on his biceps were mere incidentals that proclaimed his authority in the unlikely event that any denied it.

  Cathal ruled the Selgovae, the Hunters of the Forest, and he claimed tribute from every tribe between Great Cheviot and the lands of the Damnonii, even at times from his despised neighbours, the Votadini. He had come here with a hundred of his champions because his father had fought beside Guiderius’s father and to see if what he’d heard about the Romans was true.

  The men’s vantage point was a fort within a fort, in fact the original fortification that had crowned Brynmochdar in the days of Guiderius’s father’s father’s father, long
before his mother Cartimandua had expanded it into a refuge during her struggle with Venutius. Guiderius had deepened the original ditches and created a stout wooden palisade with a fighting platform. This would be the position from which he conducted the defence and, if the need arose, the refuge where he would make his final stand. In Cathal’s view the Brigantes should have concentrated on improving the existing defences and building huts for those who would instead suffer from lack of shelter. Guiderius insisted he must create a greater enclosure, large enough to house the warrior hosts of the Carvetii and the Parisii. They would come at his call, he insisted blithely, and he would have fifty thousand warriors to meet the Roman attack.

  Cathal’s eyes told him the Brigantes were several thousands fewer. Many were women and children and more were warriors whose heart was not in the fight. A king should not criticize a king, but still, he must try.

  ‘You will not reconsider continuing north, lord king?’

  ‘After all this effort?’ Guiderius threw out an arm to encompass the workers in the ditch to his front. ‘How many do you think would follow me?’

  ‘Whatever their numbers they would be your best and your bravest,’ Cathal said. ‘Together we would destroy the Romans in the hills and valleys of my homeland.’

  ‘Would you truly advise me to leave here?’

  ‘I would take my people to the very ends of the earth before I would allow them to wear Roman chains.’

  ‘I know you think I am a fool, Cathal.’ Guiderius looked up into the fierce eyes. ‘No, do not deny it. I understand why a man like you would believe that. I am not so blind that I cannot see how few of my warriors meet my eyes when I tell them we can win. That is why I had to come here. The elders have been spreading tales that the Romans are invincible in open combat. If I give them a wall to fight behind and their families to fight for they will be the equal of any legionary. The Romans can throw themselves against our spears from now until Samhain and they will gain nothing. I will bleed them until they offer terms.’