[Gaius Valerius Verrens 05] - Enemy of Rome

by Douglas Jackson

  The German’s eyes glittered. ‘And like sheep they will be slaughtered.’

  In Serpentius, Octavius’s wolves were led by a hunting leopard. When they’d ridden as close as they dared, the Spaniard led the dismounted cavalrymen unerringly through the olive groves in the darkness. The last man in each turma of thirty men was linked to the first in the following turma by a rope, so even with two thousand men none was lost along the way. Despite the relative warmth of the night every trooper wore a cloak to dull the chinking of his armour. The silence wasn’t perfect – Valerius cringed at the rattle of sword belts and the occasional muffled collision and whispered curses that signalled when a man fell or stumbled – but none was so loud that it carried to the Vitellian encampment four hundred paces away. They went three abreast, striding warily because in the pitch dark every step felt as if it would carry them into a ditch. Their eyes never left the shadowy silhouette of the man in front, and the rustle of movement to rear or flank was the only evidence they were part of a larger whole. Even for the veterans among them the still night held a constant threat that made the blood thunder in their ears and their hearts hammer against their ribs. They told themselves it wasn’t fear, only the anticipation of battle, but few among them didn’t pray to the gods of their homeland during the ordeal of that interminable journey. Eventually, a hissed command rippled down the line ordering the halt that confirmed they’d come to the most dangerous part of the march. Behind him, Valerius knew, the picked scouts of the Hispanorum Aravacorum would be leading their turmae east to the drainage ditch closest to the far side of the camp. The success of the attack depended on total concealment. If even one man gave away his position the enemy guards would alert the entire camp. A heart-stopping delay as Serpentius gave his fellow Spaniards of the Aravacorum time to reach their position, then the First was on the move again through the darkness. After a few moments Valerius heard a whispered command to the leading rank of the turma, and word came back that they’d reached the ditch and to take care. Valerius would have continued with them, but a hand came out of the darkness and drew him aside. A harsh voice whispered in his ear. ‘Better that you’re in the centre where you can control things.’

  He waited, kneeling by Serpentius’s side as the Spaniard counted the turmae through, warning each commander of the obstacle ahead. Once they were in the ditch they would make their way south towards the river, taking station opposite the temporary Vitellian fort. At a given moment Serpentius drew a junior officer aside from one of the units and told him to stay in position and inform the following cavalrymen about the ditch. When he was certain the man understood his duty he and Valerius joined the front rank of the man’s turma and slipped down the bank until their feet sank into the shallow layer of stinking ooze at the bottom. Thick mud sucked at their sandals like a living thing and released a stench of rotting eggs to clog their nostrils. The channel was only chest deep, and to stay hidden they were forced to walk in a low crouch that quickly made Valerius’s back ache and his calves burn as he wrestled to free his feet with every step. He was grateful when the man ahead stopped and he was able to sink back against the side of the trench to rest with his face to the sky.

  His eyes picked out the brightest stars. When he was a child he had sometimes seen the faces of the gods in the stars, but at others they had formed images of sea monsters and ships. Now he could see that beyond the brightest stars there were many lesser ones, and beyond them a sense of still more, of great depth and untold numbers. The effect made him feel an unnatural sense of wonder and smallness. He shrugged off the sensation. Concentrate. Stars, but no moon, thank the gods. By now the men in the far ditch would also be in position.

  Careful to remove his helmet to avoid creating a familiar silhouette, he risked a glance through the tangle of rushes and nettles on the lip of the ditch. Perhaps forty paces away a faint shadow was just visible against the luminosity of the night sky, and his mind visualized the raised bank topped by a palisade of stakes. That bank would be patrolled by sentries and fronted by at least two, possibly three ditches. In the enemy commander’s position, Valerius would have dug those ditches deep and filled them with traps, but Serpentius said that wasn’t the case, and Valerius had learned to trust the Spaniard with his life. Few men hated Romans as Serpentius did, but he was happy to serve Valerius because Valerius had saved him from certain death in the arena. The Spaniard had been taken in a reprisal raid after his Asturian mountain tribe had dared to raid one gold convoy too many. Romans like the men he marched with had killed his wife and son and he would never forget that, but revenge must wait until he had repaid his debt to the one who had given him his freedom and his life. A born warrior, and if he was to be believed a prince of his tribe, his fighting skills and preference for pitiless violence had made him an ideal recruit for the arena. Deadly with either sword or spear, his lightning speed and lethal precision soon earned him the name Serpentius – the Snake. Another man might eventually have won his freedom through his victories and popularity, but the Spaniard killed with a cold, murderous intensity that intimidated rather than entertained, and he never hid his contempt for the mob. Eventually, he would have been sacrificed, outnumbered and poorly armed, his death delivered to the crowd in a tawdry, blood-spattered spectacle. Valerius had found him just in time.

  The Roman dropped back, doubt sending a shiver through him. Had he made the right decision, or should he have retreated towards Patavium? No. He’d done the only thing possible. If he could stop the Vitellians here it would give Primus time to bring his troops forward into the broad flatlands of Venetia. There, the general could choose his battleground and wait for Valens or Caecina to come to him. For the moment though, Valerius could do nothing but wait. In the surrounding darkness two thousand cavalrymen waited with him, every man alone with his thoughts, his hopes and his fears.

  It wasn’t dawn so much as the promise of dawn. The sky transformed in a moment from inky black to darkest blue and, in the next breath, to a slightly fainter shade that silhouetted the stakes of the palisaded parapet and the guards patrolling it against the dying night. A plaintive screech split the fading darkness as if a hunting owl was making its final pass over the grasses bordering the ditch. It was the last thing the sentries would ever hear.

  Valerius had posted a hundred of his Thracian archers among the men in the ditch. By now they had already picked their targets among the dozen or so unsuspecting sentries. The moment the screech died in Serpentius’s throat Valerius heard the familiar soft ‘thrum’ of bowstrings. It was followed by the unmistakable hiss of arrows carving the air, and a heartbeat later the smack as the iron-tipped shafts struck and the short-lived cries of men pinned by six or seven arrows apiece. In the same instant a single archer set the pitch-soaked cloth of a fire arrow to the bowl of glowing charcoal hidden beneath his cloak and sent the shaft curving through the sky like a shooting star.

  Before the arrow fell to earth the men of the First had hauled themselves from the drainage ditch and were dashing silently towards the temporary fort. Valerius knew the death of the sentries wouldn’t have gone unnoticed, but he gambled that the suddenness of it would cause a moment of confusion rather than an instant call to arms. His heart stuttered as the ground dropped away beneath his feet. The ditch. Mars’ arse. He prayed Serpentius had been right about the ditch and the palisade. Fear gripped his guts like a closed fist. This was the moment. If the defences delayed them even for a few heartbeats the defenders would line the parapet above and their weighted javelins would lance down into the attackers. Those spears would easily punch through the light cavalry shields and the tight-knit auxiliary ring mail that would stop an edge, but not a point. Octavius and his men would be slaughtered and Valerius would be slaughtered with them.

  He gritted his teeth and drove the fear aside; if he was going to die, let the fates decide. He was Gaius Valerius Verrens, Hero of Rome and the only survivor of the Temple of Claudius, and this was his attack. It was his plan that had
brought these men here to this damp, misty field. Pride would haul him up the slope to die beneath the wooden palisade even if courage didn’t. But Serpentius had been certain and he was proved right. The ditch should have been eight feet deep with a shallow slope on the outward side, to draw an attacker in, but a vertical face on the inner, topped by the earthen bank and the palisade. A virtually unscaleable obstacle the height of three men with defenders at the top. But the enemy had been lazy. The ditch was only half the proper depth, and the earth spoil had been heaped in a soft, easily mounted slope. Above him, Valerius could see gaps in the wooden palisade and already men had climbed to the top of the earthen bank and started to tear at the stakes and rip them free from the loose soil.

  The first shouts of alarm rang out and he knew the men of the First Hispanorum Aravacorum would already be carrying their swords into the camp. From somewhere in the distance a trumpet sounded and a torch flared on the far side of the river. Valerius kicked at a four-foot post and squeezed through the gap, knowing Serpentius wouldn’t be far from his side. Already hundreds of men were spilling down the rear of the earthen bank towards the neat rows of eight-man tents. He stepped over a dead man, noting the arrows that pierced his chest and throat. When he saw the dull glimmer of the man’s armour he realized how fortunate he’d been. The sentries were all auxiliaries wearing chain link vests. If they’d been a regular legionary unit wearing the more protective plate, some would certainly have survived to raise the alarm. But they hadn’t and now the killing could begin.

  ‘Now,’ he roared. ‘Let the bastards hear you.’ The Germans responded with the blood-curling wolf’s howl that was their battle cry and threw themselves at the men spilling from the tents, attempting to fix straps and pull armour over their heads. The Vitellians were unprepared, and men who go into battle unprepared are ripe for the slaughter.

  A bearded soldier wearing only a brown tunic appeared from the darkness to Valerius’s left and tried to skewer him with a spear. Valerius swayed to allow the point to slip past his right shoulder and rammed forward with his sword, feeling it pierce soft flesh and solid muscle before the iron jarred against the soldier’s spine. A sharp twist should have torn it from the dying body, but he’d struck too deep. Instead, he had to put his foot on his victim’s chest to lever the blade free, thanking the gods no one was around to kill him for his stupidity.

  He tried to gauge the course of the fight from the sounds around him. What he could hear was the noise of a rout. The sound of men exulting in the joy of battle in a guttural, formless tongue; the howls of the eviscerated and the shrieks of the dying; cries for mercy that would go unheard. It all seemed perfect, but something in the background made him uneasy. A headless torso lay nearby, the corpse wearing a set of lorica segmentata plate armour that told Valerius he wasn’t facing only auxiliaries. Not that it made any difference to the German cavalrymen who whooped and laughed as they chased unarmed, half-clothed enemies through the tents. Valerius attempted to restore some order, roaring for Octavius to form a reserve, but the Flavians were driven beyond control by the taste of blood and the ease of the killing. Serpentius appeared at his side like a wraith from the Otherworld, a bloodied sword in his hand.

  ‘The bastards had better enjoy it while they can,’ the Spaniard said ominously.

  ‘What?’ Valerius struggled to hear him above the clamour of battle.

  ‘To the west,’ the former gladiator pointed with his sword. ‘Some of them aren’t running around like headless chickens, and if you don’t do something about it we’ll be the ones with our cocks on the butcher’s block.’

  VIII

  Valerius ran in the direction of the river, cursing his stupidity for getting involved in the fight when he should have been directing it. He’d hoped the surprise attack would panic the Vitellians into either surrendering or retreating. Instead, somewhere among the rows of tents an officer had rallied his men and very soon the hunters would become the hunted.

  ‘Stay here and try to round up as many Thracians as you can,’ he called as he passed Serpentius. ‘Tell them to conserve their arrows.’

  Octavius was trying to form his men into some sort of line using the flat of his sword. ‘I have a feeling that very soon this is going to be no place for a cavalryman,’ the German shouted.

  ‘Just get them formed up and follow me. Tell them we outnumber the bastards two to one and this is their chance to kill some Romans.’

  The other man grinned and waved a reassuring hand.

  On the west side of the camp, Valerius found a cleared space where the tents had been flattened and discarded equipment lay scattered all around. Here were the bloodied remnants of what had been the right flank of his attack on the camp. Six hundred strong and a mixture of Germans and Spaniards, they had lost all cohesion and stood shouting insults at the men on the other side of the open ground. The Roman stumbled to a halt, breathing hard, and a chill ran through him at the sight of an unbroken line of shields a few dozen paces in front of the bridge. The bridge was a temporary structure, made up of requisitioned boats and wooden planking, hastily roped together by men in a hurry to create a holding on the east side of the river.

  As he felt the first rays of the rising sun on his neck Valerius realized his mistake had been not to take into account that the diverging ditches gave the attackers on this side of the camp a longer charge to reach the palisade. It meant the centurion commanding the legionary cohort had two or three seconds more to prepare, and that was enough. Unlike the auxiliaries who shared and had been responsible for building the temporary fort, he’d kept a full century on the alert in case of an emergency. Attacked from both flanks, they’d managed to hold off the assault and win time for their comrades to equip and arm themselves. Now something like four hundred battle-hardened legionaries formed two lines behind the big, brightly painted scuta, the shields’ surfaces showing the golden lion symbol of the First Germanica.

  But there was still hope. ‘Form line!’ Valerius roared the order as Octavius ran to his side followed by a few dozen of his troopers. The German and Spanish cavalrymen still outnumbered the depleted legionary cohort, and if they could hold firm long enough for the outer wings of their line to envelop the enemy they had a chance. But whatever the outcome, the centre of the line would be a horror of slaughtered auxiliaries. The centre of the line was where men would die, the outer flanks where men would win.

  Valerius sheathed his sword long enough to pick up an abandoned legionary scutum and fix it to his wooden fist. He marched along the front of the ragged line of grim-faced auxiliaries. For all their training the dismounted cavalrymen Octavius led were little better than the barbarians the men opposite had spent years slaughtering in their thousands. But they were all he had. ‘You fight here and win or you die here,’ Valerius snarled. He didn’t know whether they understood him, but he could hear Octavius shouting and hoped the German was translating his words. ‘There is no going back. If you break, they will hunt you down like rats. So you will hold, and you will win.’

  He forced his way into the centre of the line and a rumbling growl of defiance ran through the ranks. By now the enemy at the far end of the bridge should be thinking about reinforcing their comrades on the eastern bank, but he could see no threat. Where was Serpentius? It seemed unnatural not to have the Spaniard by his side, but even the thought of the feral, snarling features gave him comfort. He felt a fire ignite low in his guts, rise to fill his chest and surge into his brain, bringing with it an elixir that made the rest of the world seem slow and the men facing him nothing but victims: sacrifices for the long cavalry spatha he carried. In a fight he was the equal of any man – the equal of the gods. It didn’t matter that he knew the reaction was illusory – a soldier’s way of escaping the reality of battle – all that mattered was that it existed. He nodded to the man next to him and hefted his scutum to shoulder height. ‘Keep your shield together with mine and hold. Any danger will come from your left. Aim for the eyes and the thr
oat.’ The soldier replied something Valerius didn’t understand, but his reassuring grin was enough.

  A barked order sent a thrill of dread and anticipation through him. The line of legionary shields opposite came up and the disciplined ranks moved towards him with the legionary’s unhurried, seemingly unstoppable measured pace.

  ‘Forward!’ Valerius echoed the enemy order to advance and his cavalrymen, wishing more than anything they had their horses beneath them, took the first tentative steps towards the bobbing line of legionary shields opposite. They were less than fifty paces away now, and the Roman could hear the centurion in command barking at his men to keep their formation, to keep their shields up, to remember that a handspan of iron was enough to kill any man. Across the human detritus of the battleground the man met his gaze, his attention drawn by the legionary shield that marked Valerius out from the auxiliaries around him. Valerius raised his sword in salute, and the centurion grinned. It seemed madness that within the next thirty paces they would be trying to kill each other, especially now that Valerius could see his gamble had failed. For the survivors of the Vitellian auxiliary cohort had found a way to re-join their legionary comrades. Even as he watched, they took up station on the flanks, lengthening the line and ensuring there would be no envelopment and no victory. With a grunt of weary resignation Valerius hunched his shoulders and prepared for his last fight.

  The sound, when it came, was almost lost in the clatter of armour and the thump of marching feet, but Valerius heard the faint slap and saw one of the men on the left of the legionary line fall backwards, creating a gap in the shield wall. In the next few moments more of the legionaries went down and now came the clatter of iron-tipped arrows hitting shield and armour. With his casualties mounting the enemy centurion had no option but to call a halt, ordering his men to shelter behind the big scuta. The archers’ intervention had been as much of a surprise to Valerius as his opponent until he remembered his instruction to Serpentius to round up the scattered Thracians. He was tempted to order an all-out charge that might break the enemy line, but he knew the movement would only shield them from the arrows that were keeping them honest. Instead, he shouted at his men to hold their positions and wait. A growl of dissent went up from the ranks around him, and he stepped from the ranks to scream the order into their faces until the line stumbled to halt.