by Manda Scott
The other two sons of the Sun Hound flanked her, one on either side. To her left she said, “You wanted a war. Are you glad now you have it?”
“We won’t fight them now, it’s too close to winter. This is for show. They know we can do nothing before spring.” Caradoc rode a dun horse like the one Bán had given him. The white cloak spread across its haunches, sodden with the mud and sweat of the ride as much as the rain. He was as angry as she was and making no effort to hide it. Tight-lipped, he said, “I apologize. The fault was mine. Does that make you happy?”
From her right, Togodubnos, who had lost most and handled it best, said, “Stop. There is no fault. We tried and we lost. From the moment Amminios refused my offer of the single port and rode south, the rest was inevitable. He lost some men in taking back the southlands from Caradoc’s Ordovices and now we have fewer to fight in spring. That is as good as it could be.” Staring out at the spears ranged against them, he said, “Think; it could be worse. He could have journeyed straight to Rome and asked the new Caesar to give him the legions to take his land back.”
“What makes you think he won’t?” Breaca cleared her throat and spat. In the rain and the wind, facing an uncertain future, her rage began to wither. Without it, she was empty, hungry and cold, and none of these things mattered as much as the need to weave a solid alliance that would grow into a force that could fight and win. She sighed and, for the first time since the desperate race from the dun, the Warrior balanced the woman. To whichever of her companions chose to listen, she said, “It’s nearly winter. Not even Caligula is mad enough to send troops across the ocean now. We have a full winter to prepare. Our smiths can beat weapons and our warriors can train to use them as they have not done since the time of Caesar. Between us, we can raise an army that will cut down the Atrebates as a blade cuts corn. If the gods are with us, it will be enough to hold the weight of Rome.”
CHAPTER 21
In Germany, on the banks of the Rhine, under the gaze of the Emperor Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus, also known—although never in his hearing—as Caligula, the probationaries from Gaul put on their best display.
March. Watch the dress of the weapons. The spear’s slipping. Keep your grip and don’t let the tip waver. March.
A circular horn wailed at the rear of the ranks. The cohort paused for a heartbeat and then, to a man, wheeled left. Relief rippled down the lines. Only since midwinter had the probationaries begun to learn the horn notes along with the spoken commands, and only since the first day of February had they worked with the horn alone; to do it now, and perfectly, was little short of a miracle. Bán noted the relief as he noted everything else, dispassionately. A small part of him marched mechanically in time with the rest. The greater part, his soul, watched and judged and felt nothing.
It had taken some time in the early days after Iccius’s death for Bán to understand the change that had taken place within him. In the beginning, he had thought the void in his soul was a body’s natural response to shock and would pass with time. Slowly, on the journey east through Gaul, he had come to realize that he had lost also the foundations of his life that had held him together in the two years of slavery to Amminios—that Breaca no longer came to him, nor Macha, and that he missed them both. In their place, he grew accustomed to the sense of Iccius walking at his side, or rather, of himself walking with Iccius in the lands of the dead, both of them shades in a land of shadows, saying nothing, but sharing a quiet companionship.
It was not an unpleasant sensation and, having no fear of death, he had found himself insulated from the many fears that beset the Gauls who had joined up with him. He had acquitted himself well so far in the infantry training—he had, in fact, found parts of it challenging, even exhilarating, and had some hopes that he might attain the cavalry, although that was as much for Corvus’s honour as his own. The prefect had almost completed the recruitment for his newly formed cavalry wing, the Ala V Gallorum, and had made it clear that he expected Bán to join his unit as soon as the probationary period was over. It was a hurdle to aim for and no harm in it and it did nothing to hinder Bán’s resolve to find, in time, a means by which he could join his family and Iccius in the lands of the dead; his only constraint was that it must be done with honour.
The Crow was his greatest hope in this regard. The colt had not mellowed on the journey east towards the Rhine. Indeed, it still fought to kill anyone who tried to mount it and Bán spent every moment of his spare time in its company, playing out a complex dance where he provoked danger but must do his best to overcome it. So far he had succeeded and could now mount without fear of serious injury, but nothing was certain.
Keep pace. Maroboduus is stepping short on his left foot. Don’t let him put you off your stride.
The horn brayed again. The mass of men paused briefly and Bán with them. They were nowhere close to the polish of the battle-hardened legions who moved reflexively at the first flutter of notes. Perulla, their centurion, raised a threatening arm and movement returned to the ranks of trainees. Bán wheeled right and found he had to skip a step to bring his rhythm in line with the rest.
Hell and damnation, he will have noticed that.
Don’t look back.
He had looked back once during practise and found himself running the first five miles of the training route in full kit for days on the strength of it. Reparation for a missed step in the emperor’s parade would be worse than that, without doubt. He marched on, his eyes fixed on the bobbing helmet of the man ahead and his attention on the silver and scarlet knot of Praetorian Guard standing to attention in the stands, and the man who sat in state amongst them.
He’s asleep. Or he’s dictating to the scribe. Why are we doing this if he’s not paying attention? Look at us, damn you. Or don’t. We don’t need to be noticed. Just let us march and get it over and go back to where you came from. Tell them the Rhine armies are invincible, it is what they want to hear. Better than the truth, that the forest will never yield to Rome, nor should it. What would your Senate say if you told them that, Gaius Germanicus?
Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus. Caligula. Two names for one man. Before Corvus’s men had ever set foot in Upper Germany, his actions had touched them. They had been travelling through Belgian Gaul when news had reached them that the emperor had ordered the execution of Germany’s governor and that his replacement, Lucius Sulpicius Galba, was in place. Until then, Corvus had kept his men travelling slowly. Bán had found later that the prefect had known what was coming, that he had served under Galba in Aquitania and it was on the incoming governor’s orders that he had begun raising the new cavalry wing. Corvus had been sent west to keep him clear of the trouble and had been ordered to keep his recruits out of the way until the carnage had ended.
Corvus had quickened the pace with the news that the new governor was in place, but still the group did not travel overfast. In the half-month it took for the new recruits to reach him, Galba had swept like grassfire through the legions of the Rhine, discharging the lame, the indolent and the old with a ferocity that had left the remainder bruised and cowed. Having broken them, the governor set to building them up again. Men who had thought service under the eagle a pleasant way to pass the time had learned their mistake. By the last days of autumn, when Corvus led his men and their long strings of new mounts into the cavalry stockade at Moguntiacum, the legions were buzzing. By late winter, they had built two new legionary forts and the ranks had been able to execute their manoeuvres with a precision not seen since the days of the republic.
In the first days of spring, a new legion had marched in and taken up residence in one half of the newly built quarters. The men of the Legio XXII Primigenia were Roman citizens and they believed themselves as far superior to the Gauls and Germans with whom they exercised as their emperor was to ordinary men. Within five days, they had revised that notion. Within ten, the evil of the river had touched them and the desertions had begun.
Every one of the incomers fear
ed the river. It swept hissing past the camps, a sucker of souls, bearer of bloated carcasses and home to biting insects, and each dawn it spewed a clinging mist that spread out in flat planes that hid the defects in the ground so that the cavalry rode out daily in fear for their horses’ legs. Only those born and raised on the banks of the Rhine found it tolerable. The Batavian auxiliaries could swim it in full armour with their horses beside them and not break ranks. They did it for bets, for training and displays for the senior officers, or simply for the thrill of immersing themselves in its embrace. They loved it for itself and for the one name that was woven inextricably in its history: Arminius, son of Sigimur, destroyer of the legions, the man whose soul, it was said, had taken strength from the river and returned it a hundredfold.
Here, too, the men were divided. The Romans and Gauls would make the sign to avert evil at the sound of Arminius’s name and spit against the wind. The Germans were more discreet and saved their opinions for those whom they trusted most. Bán heard the details from Civilis, the big, broad Batavian with the freckled skin and the washed-gold hair who had clubbed him to unconsciousness at Corvus’s command and been apologizing for it ever since. The Batavians were an emotional people and Civilis, like all his kin, was prone to expansive friendships. Since Durocortorum, he had taken to Bán as a son, or a younger brother lately come to manhood, and the tale of Arminius was one more piece of his heritage that must be learned. He told it sitting on one of the three bridges over the river, dangling his feet over the edge and tossing in pebbles for luck, one for each of the three legions destroyed. “The Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth are gone with their cohorts and auxiliaries and all their camp followers. They will not be heard of again.”
Bán had spent two months with the legions by then. They believed themselves invulnerable and he had seen no reason to suppose they lied. Politeness constrained him from saying so. “How were they defeated?” he had asked.
“It was Augustus’s fault. He put Quinctilius Varus in charge of them and the man was a lawmaker, never a warrior. But they would have died anyway; Arminius had fought with them and seen their weakness. They had not learned that to march in lines with armour polished to dazzle the sun is not a good way to fight in a forest. And then, too, they trusted Arminius because he had once been an officer. It was impossible for them to imagine that any man could forsake Rome and return to the tribes.”
Civilis grinned his contempt, showing white teeth in the moonlight. His own sword belt was polished to outshine the stars and he, too, was an officer in the legions, if only a decurion of an auxiliary cohort.
Bán said mildly, “We still fight in lines.”
“Of course. The legions will never learn from that mistake. To do so would be to admit their weakness, and Rome can never be weak. But she will also never again seek to bring Greater Germany, that part east of the river, into her empire. Because of Arminius, the tribes of the forest live free of the yoke of Rome.”
“The same Rome that you fight for.”
Civilis shrugged. “The pay is good.” He had leaned for-ward. “And I believe in the river. It is said amongst our people that it holds the spirit of Arminius. While the river flows, Rome and her allies may not pass.”
In that, Bán believed him. He had watched as the evil sucked at the hearts of the Gauls who had accompanied him from Durocortorum. Men who thought themselves warriors or hoped to become so turned to whimpering children when made to stand watch in pairs overnight. Forage parties sent across the bridge to cut timber for the new camps came back silent and white-eyed, shying like horses at any sudden noise. An army camp is full of sudden noises. Those sharing their tents, and later, once built, their wooden huts, passed unpeaceful nights. Bán alone had been untouched, his soul safe with Iccius in the lands of the dead.
Then the Roman legionaries arrived and, by the end of the month, Bán had witnessed the first execution of a deserter caught and returned three times to his unit. His headless body had been cast into the river and the remainder of his cohort were made to stand watch as it floated downstream on the grey, malice-ridden water. The losses had slowed after that, but never fully stopped.
With spring the snows had cleared and it had become possible to travel, and the river had become a minor irritant, a thing to be scratched off along with the mosquitoes and head lice in the face of the greater, more tangible threat of the emperor. The news had come with the first day of February. He is coming. He will be here in ten days’ time to inspect the legions. He has banished his own two sisters and executed Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, who was his lover. He will kill any man who catches his eye. Death from Gaius comes slowly.
The Romans of the new legion had known Gaius firsthand and were the most afraid. Their training had fallen apart as men panicked, and had come together again as the centurions flogged the sense back into them, or greater fear.
They had reached a peak of polish at the time it was required. Gaius had arrived in the early morning on a day of no cloud and the two legions of Moguntiacum had waited in perfect ranks with the winter sun sparking a million pinprick fires from their armour. For the honour of their emperor they had spent a day in manoeuvres and Galba, the governor, had marched amongst them, taking personal charge. They had marched for twenty miles up the banks of the river and back again, dug a ditch, built a rampart, attacked and defended it, and not a single man had faltered in a display that lasted all the hours of daylight. The emperor had let it be known that he was impressed.
That had been the first day. The second was given over to the cavalry. It was not a day in which Rome could excel, save by proxy. Romans did not make good cavalrymen but they had the gold to buy the loyalty of those who did, and so squadrons of Gauls vied with Germans for superiority in the speed, precision and daring of their displays. The day rocked to the thunder of mounts pushed to the limit, and the cries of men in triumph.
Later, close to evening, the legions gathered to watch a parade of a different kind. The emperor had need of new warriors for his German horse guard and Moguntiacum had the honour to provide them. From amongst three thousand volunteers of the Ubii and the Batavi, five hundred had been handpicked by Galba. They were big men like Civilis, with the same sun-flushed skin. Mounted on matching chestnut horses, they had ridden out in their war dress, their red-gold hair knotted above the right ear, faces streaked with white clay and tunics hung with horse tails and the dried scalps of their dead.
Their display had been breath-stopping. In every respect, it had surpassed all that had gone before and, this once, Gaius had shown his approval in a way that could be seen by anyone who watched. He had ridden down the ranks congratulating the riders personally, adding, every now and then, an additional instruction so that, when the five hundred left the field, half of their number did so knowing that they would henceforth spend their lives bound to their emperor, closer than the Praetorian Guard. The legionaries and probationaries had watched and approved. Gaius might have a limited understanding of warfare, but he had a sharp sense of what it took to protect his own hide. It would be a brave man who took on the horse guard, and even so he would not reach the emperor alive.
Nearly finished. Don’t look up. Corvus said not to attract his attention. “What he likes he wants and what he wants he takes. You are different. You stand out the way your killer colt stands out in a field of brown mares. If he sees you, he will want you and the colt both. Don’t give him cause to look.”
He hasn’t looked yet.
The morning of the third day had been devoted entirely to the probationaries and they were nearly halfway through. Two horns sounded together, a semitone apart, calling the halt.
That’s it. We’re done.
They were not the horse guard. It was not given them to see their emperor face-to-face. An order was given through the tribune of the Praetorian Guard and Perulla, centurion to the probationaries, stepped forward to an unknown fate. The emperor had not yet ordered the execution of a centurion for the failing
s of his century but it was not unknown. The recruits waited in utter silence. They had a respect for their centurion, if not a great love. For four months he had bullied, cajoled and flogged them into order. None had liked him but they recognized an evenhandedness in the way he had behaved. He had not chosen favourites, or bullied the weak more than their comrades, and all had grown into a measure of respect. More than one realized now that it would have hurt to see him die.
The Praetorian tribune stepped down from the stands. Bán held his breath and, behind him, heard a god named in Gaulish. An order was given in Latin, too far away to hear, and it seemed that Perulla was not to die, or even to be dismissed, but that those of the recruits who hoped to win a place amongst the cavalry were required to fetch their mounts and conduct their display. Bán risked a downward glance. Greying river-mist sculled at his ankles, the river’s bane come out in force. With a brief prayer to Iccius, he turned and ran to fetch the brown mare whose colour and bearing would attract no attention.
“How did it go?”
“Badly.”
