The three men walked across the open space to where the cohorts were arraying themselves, centurions and their chosen men making swift work of chivvying their men into tidy formations, the ranks of mail-clad soldiers swiftly falling silent as their officers, spying Cerialis’s approach, bellowed for them to come to attention. A bronze-armoured officer strode forward and saluted crisply, waiting in silence for Cerialis to respond, the cavalry officer behind him echoing the gesture of respect an instant later. The legatus augusti nodded, looking up and down the paraded cohorts before speaking.
‘Welcome, Sextilius Felix, and you are very welcome indeed! Your men are well turned out and well disciplined, they do you great credit and they will make an excellent addition to my army, which is doubtless what Licinius Mucianus had in mind when he directed you to join us. Allow me to introduce Legatus Tiberius Pontius Longus and First Spear Pugno of the Twenty-first Rapax. And who’s this fellow you’ve brought along with you? He has the look of a German.’
The words were spoken with a smile, but the challenge implicit in them was unmistakable. Pugno, guessing from his superior’s jocular tone that Cerialis knew exactly who the cavalry wing’s leader was, maintained his expressionless mask as he waited to see how the other man would respond. Stepping forward, the big man saluted again, his confident gaze fixed on the Roman general.
‘I am Julius Briganticus, Legatus Augusti, appointed commander of the Ala Singularium by order of Aulus Vitellius after his victory over the usurper Otho, and more recently confirmed in that position by order of Consul Mucianus. I received orders from Rome to join Legatus Felix’s command, and to march with his cohorts and report to you here. I am to operate under your command in ridding Germania of any and all enemies, whether from inside the empire or from outside its borders. My cavalry wing is formed of picked men from half a dozen other wings and was originally intended to form a bodyguard to Vitellius. When his advisors decided against such a thing it was agreed that rather than returning them to their various units they would be retained as a formed unit, in order to demonstrate the excellence of the empire’s cavalry. My only regret is that we did not participate in the battles that ended the civil war.’
Longus nodded slowly, looking the cavalryman up and down.
‘You seem very familiar to me, Prefect. You have the look of a man that I used to see on the Palatine Hill, the commander of the imperial bodyguard, in the days before Nero killed himself and Galba sent the Germans home at the behest of his praetorians, the fool.’
‘You speak of Hramn, Legatus, a nobleman of the Batavi tribe. My cousin. I have not spoken to him for two years, not since it became clear to both of us he did not share my belief that Roman rule is the most beneficial way for our people to prosper, a belief that swiftly led to my family turning against me. I volunteered for service elsewhere in the empire as a means of avoiding the mutual hostility that would have resulted had I remained within our cohorts.’
Pugno looked at the German with fresh interest. Even Felix seemed momentarily taken aback.
‘I was aware that you were of the Batavi tribe, Briganticus, but the fact that you are so closely related to their prince Civilis was not communicated to me. He’s your uncle, if I’m right?’
‘He is, Legatus. Although I have sworn scared oaths to Hercules, Mars and Jupiter that if I meet him in battle only one of us will leave the field. I will spare myself and my men no hardship in the pursuit of victory over this rebellion.’
‘Why?’
The German’s gaze flicked from Longus to Pugno, his momentary surprise at being addressed by the senior centurion betrayed by a narrowing of his eyes, and the legatus smiled, raising a hand to defuse the tension.
‘Forgive my first spear his apparent abruptness, Prefect. My new legion raises its officers in a rather less formal tradition than you might have become used to.’
Briganticus nodded impassively.
‘I am Batavi, Legatus. My people treasure “abruptness” as a sign of manliness no less than the Twenty-first Legion. And so to answer your question, First Spear Pugno, my path diverged from that followed by my uncle when he determined on fomenting revolt against the empire among the men of my tribe. His encouragement to Vindex when that fool led the Lingones in their doomed rebellion against Nero was not the first sign I had seen of his true intentions, but when the result was his brother’s execution I knew that I could no longer tolerate him. I—’
‘Your father was Civilis’s brother, Claudius Paulus?’
Briganticus turned to Cerialis with a shake of his head.
‘No, Legatus Augusti, but he might as well have been. My father was killed in Britannia during the revolt of the Iceni, and as my mother’s older brother, Paulus assumed responsibility for my training as a warrior, and took my father’s place in explaining the ways of the tribe to me. He was a prince of the tribe, but not yet a citizen of the empire, and Kivilaz must have known that this would make him vulnerable to Rome’s need to be seen to exert its authority, once Vindex was inevitably defeated, but still he took my adopted father with him on his mission with the avowed intent of counselling the Lingones against confronting Rome.’ He shook his head disgustedly. ‘Which was, of course, nothing but a pretext for meeting Vindex and determining his readiness to start a full-blooded war with Rome, a war the Batavi might take a side in. And, since the governor of Lower Germania had to be seen to be acting decisively, his brother, a non-citizen, was a quick and easy target for reprisal when Vindex’s revolt had been brought to its inevitable brutal end. He was executed, as I’m sure you know, and my uncle sent to Rome where Galba pardoned him.’
‘This man Claudius Paulus was executed for his older brother’s crimes?’
Briganticus nodded at Pugno, his face stone-like.
‘My adopted father was always in thrall to his older brother. Kivilaz was the hero of the family, always at the point of the tribe’s spear. At the Medui river, at the defeat of the Iceni, at any major battle the Batavi fought in twenty-five years, he was always there, and my adopted father forever lived in his shadow, aspiring to the greatness that seemed effortless to Kivilaz. It killed him in the end, that need to stand alongside a brother whose first thought was always for himself, and on the day that he was executed I swore a blood oath to tell Kivilaz the depth of my hatred for him at the moment I take revenge for that betrayal of family duty. I will spit the words into his face as I put my iron into his guts, or as he kills me. You can depend on one or the other.’
The Old Camp, Germania Inferior, April AD 70
‘Well now, Munius Lupercus, here you are, ready to travel west to meet your new mistress. I wonder what use Veleda will decide to put you to?’
The Roman looked down from his horse at Kivilaz, his face wan from a week of captivity during which he had seen daylight for no more than a few minutes at a time, his features still drawn from the privations of the siege’s last weeks. He was seated on a horse in the middle of the half-dozen men of the Batavi Guard who had been detailed to escort him safely to the priestess Veleda’s tower in the heart of the Bructeri tribe’s land to the east of the river Rhenus, Marius mounted alongside him. The burned-out remains of the fortress loomed over them, the heads of hundreds of dead legionaries and their officers staring blankly at them from the stakes on which they had been crudely impaled as a warning to others.
‘Julius Civilis. I see you’ve cut away your red hair, now that you’ve finally managed to starve my men into submission. Does it irk you that in six months you never managed to get so much as a single man inside my camp, other than those we threw down from the walls to have their throats cut by the legionaries waiting below? The deaths of your men used to trouble me, at first, although in the end you threw them at us in such numbers that their slaughter lost all meaning for me. I thought I understood the depths of your barbarism when I saw you send them forward to risk the most horrific of fates.’
The Batavi leader grinned up at him.
‘Surely the m
oment our “barbarism” became fully clear was when you marched your men into the forest expecting us to feed and shelter them, only to discover that wasn’t our intention?’ The Roman stared down at him in silence. ‘What, you’ve got nothing to say? No curse to spit down at me? No threats of Rome’s revenge?’
Lupercus shook his head wearily.
‘I never was a man who conducted warfare with his mouth, I usually left that to men whose verbosity outweighed their martial prowess.’
The German smiled again.
‘In another man I’d mark that down as an attempt to provoke me to kill you, and spare you the shame of being enslaved to a barbarian woman, but in your case I think it’s just weariness with the world around you that makes you so dangerously frank. I shall have to warn your guards not to rise to what they will consider provocation.’ He turned to look at Marius, who was sitting in gloomy silence beside his legatus. ‘And you, First Spear, do you have nothing to say? No gratitude for my nephew here for having spared you the indignity of dying in the massacre that took so many of your men?’
The Roman looked down at him expressionlessly.
‘I would rather have died with a sword in my hand than found myself likely to live out the remainder of my days in the service of a servant of barbarian gods. Your nephew has doomed me to shame and a memory sullied by a lifetime of captivity, where I might simply have taken my leave of this life with dignity.’
Hramn laughed curtly.
‘With dignity? There was no dignified death planned for you, friend Marius. You would have gone to the arena with your colleague the Banô, and been doomed to kill your own men until one of them managed to kill you.’
Marius shrugged.
‘Then that would have been a quick and easy death, because I would never raise a blade against my own men.’
‘Unlike your friend. He took fourteen of your legionaries apart that first afternoon.’
Lupercus nodded knowingly, a faint smile creasing his lips.
‘Something at which neither the first spear nor I are in the slightest surprised. But tell me …’ he waved a hand at the sea of heads arrayed in front of the burned-out camp, ‘if our colleague Aquillius is dead, as you say, then where is his head in this sea of grisly trophies, if you sent him to the arena to meet his death at the hands of his own men? If you hated him so much, why is he not here in the best position to be seen and gloated over? After all, it’s clear enough that you despised him to a man.’
‘He’s dead.’ Kivilaz had spoken before Hramn had the chance to reply. ‘And his head has been preserved in oil to serve as a reminder of the ill that you Romans do when you are allowed to establish dominion over the German tribes.’
‘And of course it is by now far from here, which means there’s no chance of our wishing him farewell.’
Kivilaz looked at Lupercus for a moment before replying.
‘How perceptive of you.’
The legatus shrugged.
‘Well, wherever he is now he can’t be of assistance to us, so I suggest you get us on the road to this barbarian priestess of yours.’
The Batavi prince nodded, gesturing to the man in command of the small group of guardsmen.
‘On your way, Bairaz, and make sure that you get these two precious specimens to the lady Veleda undamaged. Promises have been made, and the Batavi keep our promises!’ He bowed mockingly to the legatus, unable to keep a hard grin from his face. ‘Farewell, Munius Lupercus! Think of me from time to time, while you live the rest of your life far from your home and family, unknown and largely unlamented! I’ll be sure to make it known that you surrendered the Old Camp to me, just in case any shred of honour still clings to your name among your people!’
Lupercus nodded tautly.
‘Be quick spreading that news. Someday soon the only people you’ll have to talk to will be the legions who will come north with your death in their hearts.’
His horse turned to follow that of the guardsman holding its bridle, and he rode away without a backward glance. Marius nodded soberly to Hramn and followed, leaving the two Batavi noblemen watching as the small party trotted towards the road that would take them to the river, where a boat awaited to carry them over the Rhenus and into tribal territory.
‘Have your men worked out how it was that the Banô came to make his escape yet?’
Hramn watched the riders for a moment longer before replying.
‘His ropes had been cut, but not cleanly. Whatever it was that did the cutting was small, and ragged, from the look of the ropes. The closest we can get to knowing what happened is to surmise that he managed to palm a fragment of a broken sword blade, and use it to saw at his ropes while he was waiting for the dawn to come. The rest you already know.’
‘What about your deputy. What did Alcaeus have to say?’
‘Just what you’d expect. He found the prisoner unrepentant, when informed that he was to die in the morning, and so he left the bastard to cook in his own juices, and reflect upon his coming death. He also said that if he’d known what it was that the man was planning to do to his guards he’d have cut his throat on the spot.’
Kivilaz nodded, his lips a tight line of white flesh. The men set to guarding the hated Roman centurion had been found the next morning, one of them dead in the captive’s cell with a broken neck while the other three had been set about with his knife, their corpses left sprawled in the stink of their blood and faeces with Aquillius’s trademark eagle carved into each of their foreheads.
‘What sort of man would do that?’ Kivilaz shook his head in bafflement. ‘I don’t mean the disfiguring of our dead, we know why he feels the urge to leave his mark on them well enough from our own attitude to our enemy’s fallen. But what is it that makes a man waste precious time in which he could be putting distance between himself and our revenge?’
Hramn shrugged.
‘Perhaps he believes that he is a man with a reputation to uphold. Or perhaps it was simply the urge to show us that his spirit is unbroken. Either way he’s going to die slowly and in great pain when we recapture him. After all, the fool can hardly expect to avoid discovery from here all the way to the Winter Camp, can he?’ His mouth twitched in amusement. ‘And when we do recapture him I’ll grant my priest the pleasure of being the man who ends his life. Not only will the Banô be dead, but Alcaeus will have taken his chance to convince me that he remains committed to the tribe’s cause.’
‘You continue to doubt the man who led the massacre of the First Legion at Bonna?’
The prefect nodded.
‘I do. Whatever else I may or may not be, I am a fair judge of men. And something about this priest troubles me. Both he and Scar always struck me as a little bit too smooth. They seemed too close to the Romans in some ways, too …’
Kivilaz raised an eyebrow.
‘Too professional for your taste?’
Hramn’s face hardened, but he ignored the implied jibe.
‘Too Roman, Uncle. Draco served for the best part of twenty-five years and yet he has never been anything less than a faithful member of the tribe. And Alcaeus has an air of detachment from our cause that cannot help but communicate itself to our men. He considers the cohorts to be men apart from the army you have raised from the tribes, and so in turn do they. I wonder how well he and his men will fight when the battle I choose for them does not conform with his views as to what is appropriate for the tribe’s sons to shed blood over.’
Kivilaz pursed his lips, nodding in understanding at the frustration in his nephew’s words.
‘If there’s even a hint of truth in your concerns then we’d be best knowing the depth of his commitment to our cause sooner rather than later. And he’ll have plenty of chances to prove himself as the true Batavi we need them all to be soon enough. The elders have agreed with my opinion that it’s time Claudius Labeo and his Tungrian allies were removed from the field of play, to borrow an image from your favourite pastime. Which means marching west, cohorts and tr
ibesmen alike, and running him to earth wherever he can be made to stand and fight. You’ll soon enough have the chance to see how well your priest performs when he’s pointed at the Gauls, won’t you?’
Mosa Ford, April AD 70
‘That’s close enough, I’d say.’
Alcaeus peered through the leaves of the few trees between the three men and the forest’s edge, kneeling in the shadow of a massive oak to survey the scene playing out two hundred paces to their left with Egilhard and Lanzo on either side as his newly promoted chosen man and watch officer. The fortified village of Mosa Ford huddled on the opposite bank of the river, stout wooden walls having long since been erected to defend such an important river crossing, a one-hundred-pace-long bridge carrying the road from Germania Inferior into the Tungrian heartland, built to allow easy passage of grain to feed the armies safeguarding the frontier. On the eastern bank the Batavi cohorts were arrayed ready for battle with the Batavi Guard stood behind them in reserve, while the walls of the small fort that acted as both defence and customs post were lined with equally well-armed fighters seemingly ready to repel any attempt at seizing the crossing.
‘Looks like they’ll fight.’
Alcaeus nodded his agreement with Lanzo’s musing.
‘They’ll fight. Labeo knows that if he doesn’t stop us here there are no defendable barriers for another hundred miles. If we get across the Mosa then his only alternative to a quick death is to run as far and as fast as he can, while we tear the rest of his band of deserters to shreds and then visit our anger on their capital. Ah, there’s the prince.’
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