A nervous smiled flickered across his face as he sought some acknowledgement. Valerius turned to look over the ranks forming up behind them. ‘I didn’t ask you for an estimate, tribune.’ He kept his voice audible only to the young man, but it took on a force that pinned the smile in place. ‘I asked you for numbers. If you don’t have them find out from someone who does.’
The tribune rode off, shouting for his camp prefect. As he waited, Valerius found himself the focus of a grinning face peering out from beneath the savage mask of the bear’s pelt that hung over its owner’s wide shoulders. Big, worker’s hands clutched the pole of the legion’s eagle standard. It came to him that the last time he’d seen that face he was being marched to his execution on a dusty field in Moesia, found guilty of cowardice and deserting his comrades. Somehow he managed to keep his face straight.
‘The Seventh must have been short of proper soldiers if they made you aquilifer, Atilius Verus. You probably need an assistant just to carry that shiny new bauble.’
‘The legate must have felt sorry for me, I reckon, sir.’ The grin broadened. ‘Glad you’ve overcome your, er, difficulties, if you don’t mind me venturing.’
Valerius laughed. ‘Who’s your primus pilus?’
‘Our first file would be Gaius Brocchus, sir. Twenty-year man and a proper … soldier.’
‘Proper bastard, you mean?’
‘Proper clever, ugly bastard.’
‘Up to any little tricks, is he? Naughty games with the rations or the leave tickets?’
Verus’s face went blank. ‘I wouldn’t know about anything like that, sir.’
‘No.’ Valerius raised an eyebrow. ‘Well, I think I’ll have a little chat with him anyway.’ His face split into a smile. ‘Glad you’re with us, aquila.’
‘You too, sir. They’re young, but keen, sir,’ the standard-bearer blurted. ‘A bit raw, but you can depend on them in a fight, especially now they’re well led. The Seventh won’t let you down, sir.’
Valerius nodded, but for a moment the breath caught in his chest. He remembered another young legion, raw, but keen, who’d torn the heart out of a force of German veterans, taken their eagle, and then been ground to bloody ruin. He hoped it wasn’t an omen.
Serpentius had kept well back from the conversation. Valerius called him forward and together they walked their mounts towards the head of the column where the First cohort had pride of place. ‘Did you want me for something specific?’ the Spaniard asked. ‘Or am I just along for local colour?’
Valerius kept his face straight. ‘Just do what you do best.’
The cohort was the tactical fighting unit of a legion, and each normal cohort consisted of six centuries containing eighty men each. The First were the elite of the legion, shock troops who would be called upon to break the enemy line. Each of their five centuries was double the size of a regular unit, giving the cohort a total of eight hundred men. Officers apart, the rank and file of the Seventh Galbiana contained no veterans, so the First cohort was where Marcus Antonius Primus had placed his biggest and toughest troops. Brocchus, the cohort’s commander, was the exception. He was short enough to be dwarfed by the soldiers around him, but appeared as broad in the shoulders as he was tall. The scars of old battles criss-crossed his sour features like lines on a gaming board and someone had chopped off the end of his nose. But it was his mouth that made him truly fearsome. As Valerius approached, the centurion’s lips parted in a gruesome smile of welcome. The centre teeth in his upper and lower jaws had been knocked out, and the remainder filed to sharp points to give him the ferocious gaping maw of a monster from Hades. Valerius had seen Iceni warriors snapping at Roman throats with their teeth and he had a feeling Gaius Brocchus would know the taste of another man’s flesh.
‘And you thought I was handsome,’ Serpentius muttered under his breath.
Brocchus looked from Valerius to the Spaniard and back again, the smile never leaving his face. Word had evidently filtered down the column faster than the mounted men, and belatedly the centurion slammed his fist into his armoured chest in salute. ‘Sir.’
Valerius acknowledged the perfectly timed not-quite-insolence and studied the ranks of bright-helmeted legionaries standing behind their painted shields. ‘Your men look good, First, but how good are they?’
The compliment brought a murmur of pride from the massed ranks. Brocchus whipped round with his vine stick and rammed it into the chest of the nearest man. ‘Quiet, you noisy bastards. The officer was talking to me.’ His deep-set black eyes searched the front files for any sign of dissent before he turned back to Valerius. ‘They’re Spaniards, so their brains are between their legs,’ he leered. ‘But the only things they like better than fighting are wine and women and we don’t mind that in a soldier, do we, sir?’
Serpentius went very still and Valerius knew he was trying to work out whether the centurion had been complimenting or insulting his race. Before he could decide Valerius slipped from the saddle and threw him his reins. He walked along the ranks, inspecting the men and their equipment. Brocchus had no option but to escort him, barking minor complaints to the men. Clearly he regarded this as his domain and Valerius – legionary commander or not – as a temporary inconvenience.
The whispered words that accompanied the inspection confirmed that view. ‘No need to bring your pet killer with you, sir.’ The centurion darted a contemptuous glance at Serpentius. ‘Old Brocchus is too long in the tooth to be frightened by a broken-down sword juggler.’ He looked down at Valerius’s wooden hand and grinned. ‘I’ve heard all about you and from what I hear that’s not all you’re missing. But it doesn’t matter to me whether you ran from the rebels or not. We should be friends, you and I. All you have to do is mind your business and leave the dirty work to me and we’ll get along just fine.’
The one-handed Roman decided to ignore the implied insult. Every primus pilus protected his authority like Cerberus guarding the gates to the abyss. It wasn’t unknown for them to make this clear to a new legate, but he’d never heard of it done quite so blatantly. He guessed word of his dispute with Marcus Antonius Primus had spread and Brocchus believed it gave him some leeway to mark his territory. He halted in front of a dark-featured young legionary. ‘Name and length of service, soldier?’
‘Marcus Ulpius, second rank, first century,’ the man said in heavily accented Latin. ‘Ten months, three weeks and four days, sir.’
Valerius looked the legionary up and down. He noted the lorica segmentata plate armour was entirely free of rust, which was unusual, because it took an enormous amount of effort to keep it that way. Each set consisted of thirty-four separate pieces of body-hugging, polished iron bands; breastplates, back plates, rib protectors, shoulder-guard plates, collar plates, hinges and buckles, and every one prone to tarnish at the first hint of damp. Brocchus obviously kept his men busy.
‘Sword.’ Ulpius’s expression didn’t change as he reached across his body to draw the twenty-two-inch blade of the gladius free from its scabbard. Again, the iron was spotless and the triangular point honed needle sharp. He nodded, and the legionary replaced the weapon. Valerius could almost feel the glow of Brocchus’s pride. But now he turned to the reason for his choice of this particular legionary. The shade of Ulpius’s tunic of tight-woven wool was still close to the deep red it had been when he’d purchased it from the stores in place of a previous garment.
‘Your tunic has been replaced recently. Tell me,’ he said casually, ‘how much does a new one cost these days?’
Ulpius shot him a look of dismay. ‘Sir?’
‘You must know how much it cost, soldier,’ Valerius said reasonably. ‘When I was in Britannia, it was as much as four denarii, a lot for an ordinary ranker. I’m curious to know if it has increased.’ He had gambled that Brocchus would have added a premium to the cost of a new tunic – which would go directly into his pocket – in return for ignoring the extra punishments he could inflict on the unlucky soldier. Ulpius’s reaction confirmed his suspici
on.
The young man’s mouth opened and closed and he looked wide-eyed past Valerius’s shoulder to where Brocchus twitched and spluttered. ‘I …’
‘Or perhaps we could talk about leave entitlement?’
‘If the legate doesn’t mind,’ Brocchus said hastily, ‘this man is a little confused. A fine soldier, but … kicked by a mule … proper bang on the head.’
Valerius nodded to the legionary. ‘A fine turnout, Ulpius. You’re a credit to your unit. As for you …’ he turned his attention to the centurion, bringing his face close and lowering his voice, ‘I know all your little tricks and dodges, Brocchus, and they stop now. I will not have my legionaries fleeced of their pay and I don’t want them going into battle worried about losing a knife or a cooking pot.’
‘You can’t touch me, tribune.’ Brocchus shrugged, undismayed by the threat and certain of his leverage with the army commander. ‘I have friends with influence.’
‘You think you’re above military law just because you have twenty years and a vine stick?’ Valerius laughed. ‘From the moment Marcus Antonius Primus seals the warrant that gives me command of the Seventh Galbiana, I am the law in this legion. You will obey my orders or be back digging ditches with your pension in the legion’s hardship fund. Tonight or tomorrow we’ll be going into battle. This is a fighting legion now, not a knocking shop where legionaries get screwed for the pleasure of Gaius Brocchus. Do you understand, primus pilus?’
Brocchus snorted so hard that snot sprayed from the ragged remains of his nose, but he smashed his fist into his chest. ‘Sir.’
Valerius laughed. ‘You may think my back needs to be making closer acquaintance with the point of a javelin, centurion. Just remember that when you’re lining me up you’ll need someone watching your own back. Because my pet sword juggler will be watching mine and he’s much, much quicker than you. Now get this legion on the road and I want to hear them singing.’
Brocchus shot him a look of pure murder as he re-joined Serpentius by the side of the road to watch the red-clad formations pass. ‘What was that all about?’ the Spaniard demanded.
Valerius remounted and looked out over the never-ending tide of legionaries as the familiar strains of the March of Marius was struck up by the First cohort. ‘I just wanted to make sure they knew there was more than one proper bastard in charge of this legion now, one worth fighting for.’
Serpentius noted the grinning faces as word spread along the column of Brocchus’s humiliation, and looked up at the darkening sky. ‘They know that, but it’s going to be nightfall soon. If some fool decides to fight in the dark, pretty boy up there is going to be less interested in fighting than in making sure the new legate of the Seventh doesn’t survive his first battle.’
Valerius clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Well, you’ll just have to make sure he fails.’
He had made a new enemy, but his whole being was filled with pure, heart-pumping joy. Gaius Valerius Verrens had his legion, and he had his eagle, and he was taking them to war.
XIX
‘Mars’ arse, I wish we had some of those shield-splitters that did such a good job at the Cepha gap,’ Serpentius complained. In the gathering gloom, Valerius agreed with him, but kept his counsel in front of Ferox and his other aides. Shield-splitter was the name the men gave the wheeled scorpio artillery that fired five-foot arrows capable of ripping through a scutum as if it were silk. The scorpio was a giant bow mounted on a heavy wooden platform; it took two or three men to turn the ratchet to draw back the string – a twisted leather cord an inch in diameter. Shield-splitters had broken the back of the enemy charges when Corbulo defeated the Parthians at Cepha, a narrow valley north of the Tigris. Seventh Galbiana’s complement of ten scorpiones for every cohort, plus a ballista, had been left behind to speed up the march to Cremona. Valerius’s only consolation was that the Vitellian legions hurrying from Hostilia were likely to be equally unencumbered. Twenty-first Rapax or Fifth Alaudae were the only enemy units close enough to bring up their ballistae and scorpiones.
Primus had stationed the men of the Seventh Galbiana on the southern side of the Via Postumia with the Seventh Claudia, under Messalla, on their left flank. Aquila’s Thirteenth Gemina held the road in a tight column just three centuries wide and twenty deep, a solid backbone through the centre of the Flavian position. On their right stood the veterans of the Eighth Augusta and, holding the far right flank, the bronzed warriors of the Third Gallica in their outlandish Syrian cloaks. The general had stationed his auxiliaries on both wings, knowing they were out-muscled by the Vitellian legions. Valerius prayed the gamble paid off, because if the enemy commander used his auxiliaries to hold the centre and hammered the flanks with his legions there’d be only one outcome. Primus’s sole reserve was the host of three thousand disbanded Praetorians, who made up in enthusiasm and hatred for the enemy what they lacked in organization. Arrius Varus, surprisingly, retained his general’s confidence, scouting ahead with his cavalry to give warning of the enemy’s approach. In battle his squadrons would take up position on either side of the army. From there they could harass the Vitellian flanks, exploit an enemy retreat, or – and all Valerius’s experience told him it was a much more likely event – cover their own.
Valerius studied the western horizon, where the faintest of ochre glows marked the dying of another day. It must be now, or the chance would be lost. He’d borrowed a fine white stallion from one of his aides, the better to be seen as the light faded. Heaving himself into the saddle he rode along the front ranks of the First cohort, which held the position of honour on the right of the legionary line.
He saw Brocchus spit surreptitiously and he had no doubt the primus pilus accompanied it with a muttered curse. Atilius, the legion’s aquilifer, standing to the centurion’s left in his bearskin and gleaming breastplate, met Valerius’s nod with a grin. Behind them the legionaries stood in long silent lines, resting their arms on their heavy curved shields. An army of faceless strangers, their features hidden in the shadow of their helmet brims.
The first time Valerius heard a legionary commander rallying his troops had been on the crest of a gentle slope that would soon be slick with the blood of Boudicca’s rebels. He’d never thought to be in this position. Yet, when it came to it, he found the words flowed easily. Less than six months ago he’d stood on these damp fields with brave men at his side. Then the trampled crops had been new planted, the green shoots struggling through the dark earth into the spring sunshine. Now it was the stubble of the autumn harvest – for these were fields not yet haunted by the ghosts of battle – that prickled the feet of the men in their hobnailed sandals.
‘Do you fear the enemy?’ His voice sounded loud in his own ears, but he knew it wouldn’t carry to five thousand men. To ensure his message was heard every centurion had orders to relay his words strongly enough to carry to the next century.
‘No!’ The shouted reply rippled through the ranks after a short puzzled silence.
‘Do you fear the darkness?’
‘No!’
‘Then you are either liars or fools.’ He paused and after a moment they laughed as he’d hoped they would. ‘For together they may combine to destroy us. Our enemy is confusion. Our friend is discipline. The watchword for tonight is Tolosa.’ The Gallic city was Primus’s birthplace and an unlikely word for the Vitellian commander to choose for that reason alone. ‘Your tesserarius will remind you, but etch it on your soul. Remember it. Trust the men beside you and in front of you, and stay in contact. In the darkness, cohesion is your friend. Division is your enemy. You are a young legion; you have never fought the legions of Vitellius. That is no shame, and no fault of yours. An emperor gave you your eagle, but he was foolish enough to send you away, and paid the price. Another called for your aid, but that call came too late. Now is your chance to show your quality. Atilius?’ The standard-bearer marched forward, led by a soldier with a torch. He held the eagle aloft on its wooden pole and the spread wings glitte
red in the flickering golden light as if it were a living thing. Valerius could almost feel the legion hold its collective breath at the sight of their sacred charge. He waited until the aquilifer reached his side. ‘I promised a dying man I would save his legion’s eagle or die in the attempt.’ He allowed the image to make its impact. ‘I failed him. I … will … not … lose … another.’ The words emerged as if from a slingshot, hurled by the strength of his emotion, and the legionaries caught his mood and roared their approval.
‘Galbiana! Galbiana! Galbiana!’ A great swelling storm of defiance hung over the battlefield like a banner.
Valerius raised his hand for quiet and waited for the hubbub to cease. ‘That eagle belonged to a young legion too,’ he continued. ‘And I watched that legion charge to glory. I watched it tear the enemy ranks apart. I watched Juva, of the Waverider, optio of the first century of the Fifth cohort, destroy an enemy square and rip an eagle from the dying grasp of its aquilifer. I watched him carry it to his legate and I watched him promoted to centurion and become a Hero of Rome.’ He paused again, his mouth dry with the memory. In the silence he sensed the waves of emotion ripple through the long ranks of armoured men behind the brightly painted scuta. Battle madness, they called it, the madness that would carry a man through a shield wall to the gates of Hades. It was an elusive quality, unreliable, often untrustworthy and rare as a phoenix egg. Yet in the right hands it could be as fearsome a weapon as was ever forged in an armourer’s fire. The night air seemed to throb with its power, and Valerius marvelled that he, and he alone, had called it up. He smiled, and would have been surprised if he could have seen the elemental savagery etched in the lines of his face. ‘I was wrong.’ His voice shook with the passion that welled inside him. ‘You need not fear the enemy, because the enemy is a leaderless rabble and fodder for your swords. You need not fear the night because the spirit of Juva is with you, and Mars and Jupiter watch over you. If you forget the name Tolosa, then let Juva be the unit watchword of the Seventh Galbiana.’ This time it was the big Nubian’s name they roared, and again he raised his hands for silence. ‘We will fight on the defensive, a wall of iron that kills anyone who dares come against us. But if an opportunity arises, we must be ready to exploit it. Be ready for the command and do not hesitate. Now,’ he bowed his head, exhausted by emotions he struggled to keep under control, ‘make your peace with your gods.’
[Gaius Valerius Verrens 05] - Enemy of Rome Page 14
