RETRIBUTION

by Anthony Riches

  ‘Keep moving! Front rank, rotate!’

  The command was repeated up and down the legion’s cohorts, the leading soldiers dropping their useless shields and pausing to allow the men behind them to take their places, presenting a new unbroken line of wood and iron against the constant pecking of the enemy’s archers as they loosed a steady stream of arrows into the advancing Romans, long arrowheads designed to punch through plate armour hammering into wood and metal with pings and tocks. The occasional missile struck flesh and felled its hapless target, only for the victim’s place in the line to be instantly filled by the men behind him. The hill’s brow was barely fifty paces distant, and Antonius could see the Treviran soldiers glancing to their rear, getting ready to fall back into the shadow of their roughly constructed wall.

  ‘We’re nearly at the top! Get ready to fight!’

  Another cheer greeted Pugno’s command, and as Antonius looked to left and right he realised that for all the toll the enemy’s harassment of their climb up the slope had taken, the Twenty-first was still perfectly formed and advancing in a line tidy enough to have graced a parade ground. Returning his attention to his front he realised that the enemy cohorts holding the ridge were pulling back at the run, hurdling their wall and turning to face the oncoming threat.

  ‘Halt!’

  The legion stopped at Pugno’s command, his officers swiftly ordering their ranks while the Trevirans waited, a line of white faces behind their flat oval shields, mail-clad and clutching short swords that might well have been forged in the same imperial armouries that had equipped the men advancing upon them. Their three-foot-high stone wall presented a formidable obstacle from behind which they clearly hoped to mount a successful defence of the position. But, he realised, in building the defences the Treveri had surrendered the one advantage that might have helped them repulse the legion.

  ‘They’ve abandoned the crest!’

  Pugno grinned manically, and Antonius realised that he was lost to whatever daemon it was that came to him in battle, spittle flying from his lips as he roared another command.

  ‘And now they die! Sing! Tell these fuckers who it is that they face! Twenty-first Rapax, ever victorious! Drinkers of blood, long notorious!’

  The legionaries around them started the legion’s battle hymn again, and Antonius felt his own control slipping away as the song’s harsh, uncompromising sentiment and the implacable, burning hatred behind it filled him with a sudden need to get into the men waiting for them with his iron. So this is what it feels like, he mused inwardly, marvelling at the sudden flight of any instinct other than to kill, raising his sword and roaring out the song’s bestial words with the men on either side, no longer anything more than a warrior filled with rage and the burning urge to kill.

  ‘Ready! Spears!’

  The legionaries on either side of Antonius shook out into a looser formation to front and rear, giving themselves room to throw as they sheathed their swords and transferred their spears to their right hands in readiness for his next command, and after a short pause Pugno bellowed the command they were waiting for.

  ‘Spears … throw!’

  At such close range the volley was lethal: long, iron-shanked spearheads punching through shields and mail to pierce their targets in a chorus of screams, and the Treviran front rank shivered as dozens of men fell, some of the soldiers behind them having to be pushed forward into the front rank such was their reluctance to face the legion’s blood lust. Some men among the defenders were shuffling backwards, the terror in them growing as they realised that they were face-to-face with the deadliest threat possible, suddenly little better than a mob of individuals for all their officers’ remonstrations, and the scent of their fear filled the legions’ nostrils, giving fresh life to limbs burning from the effort of their climb to the crest. Pugno roared a command that rippled up and down the line, as his cohort commanders and centurions repeated the order that every man had been waiting for.

  ‘Twenty-first Legion! Air! Your! Iron!’

  The legionaries drew their swords, getting themselves ready to charge, and Antonius grinned wolfishly as the Treveri line visibly wavered at the sight. The man alongside him was muttering louder now, repeating the words of the battle hymn’s first line over and over, his eyes fixed on a man in the enemy front rank and his knuckles white on the hilt of his gladius.

  ‘Twenty-first Legion! On the command to attack! Show! No! Mercy!’ Pugno flicked a glance at Antonius. ‘Ready?’

  Nodding reflexively, his teeth bared in a snarl he wasn’t even aware of, the centurion locked his stare on the closest of the enemy officers and set himself ready to charge. Silence fell over the legion’s line, the sudden total stillness of perfect discipline as every man strained his ears for the order to go forward. Pugno allowed his men a moment to ready themselves for the onslaught before roaring the last order he would need to issue.

  ‘Twenty-first Legion! Attack!’

  The last word was barely formed as he started forward in the rapid, shuffling pace intended to cover the gap between the front ranks as quickly as possible, the men on either side matching him step for step as the legion lurched forward into the assault that every man had been waiting for. The Treveri ranks trembled, sudden chaos erupting along the hill’s crest as increasing numbers of men turned and fled, throwing themselves down the hill’s far side, unable to face the legionaries stalking towards them. With a sudden and total loss of discipline the enemy formation broke, those men who had stood resolute in the face of the legion’s deadly threat realising that they were being abandoned by their comrades.

  Screaming something incoherent, Antonius sprinted ahead of his men, leapt onto the wall’s unstable parapet and into those enemy soldiers who remained, smashing a sword thrust aside with his own blade before leaping down and hammering the man facing him back from the defence line with a punch of his shield, stepping in and thrusting the point of his gladius into the reeling Treveri’s neck, then ripping it free in a spray of blood as the dying man’s eyes rolled upwards in their sockets. Legionaries were fighting on either side of him, and rather than give in to the urge to simply run amok with his blade, he took a moment to search for an enemy, as the Twenty-first’s soldiers poured over the rough wall with similar intent. A hulking enemy officer battered the first legionary who went at him aside with his shield, leaving the man sprawled and dazed, and killed the second with brutal economy of effort, simply lunging forward on heavily muscled thighs and ramming his sword into the oncoming Roman’s mouth with enough force to punch the point of the weapon’s heavy blade through the back of his skull, pulling the gladius free with a savage wrench that scattered the dead man’s teeth onto the ground. Antonius strode forward and pushed the dying soldier aside, raising his gladius in challenge.

  ‘Surrender! You’ve already lost!’

  His only answer was a lightning-fast attack, the big man’s sword catching his would-be victim’s helmet and slicing through one of the two leather ties that secured his crest to leave the heavy wooden box of horse hair dangling by the remaining thong. Not allowing the Roman any time to remove the encumbering crest swinging from his head, he struck again, stabbing out at his opponent’s face, but Antonius, forewarned of the tactic by the horrifically wounded man shaking in his death throes on the ground to his right, ducked into his shield and then, as his foe’s blade scored the painted wooden surface with a bang that shook his arm, thrust forward and upwards with the full weight of his body behind the shield. The enemy centurion staggered backwards, momentarily thrown off balance, and the Roman seized his chance, thrusting the point of his gladius into the other man’s thigh so fast that the blade was in and out before the Treveri officer realised what had happened. Crippled, and bleeding profusely from what was likely to prove a fatal wound, he dropped his shield and threw down his sword, spreading his arms wide and staring at Antonius imploringly, his lips moving in an entreaty that the Roman was unable to hear over the battle’s roaring, scream
ing din, but whether it was a plea to mercy or simply for a quick and honourable death was neither clear nor of any consequence. Driven forward by instinct and the blood fury that still possessed him, Antonius drove his gladius into the staggering centurion’s chest with such force that it punched clean through both mail and padded subarmalis, grating between the big man’s ribs and piercing his heart. Stepping back from the corpse with a savage kick to free his blade, he looked about him to find Pugno watching to one side as the legion’s men continued to stream across the shallow wall and run past on either side, eager to throw themselves into the fleeing enemy cohorts that were now little better than a terrified rabble.

  ‘As I expected! You, brother-in-blood, are indeed the man I took you for!’

  Antonius nodded, suddenly weary as the inhuman power that had possessed him with the onset of the fight washed away. He gestured down the hill’s long western slope, across which the legion’s men were hunting their fleeing enemies.

  ‘Should we …?’

  The two men followed their men down the slope, Pugno nodding his approval at the litter of corpses and dying men strewn in the wake of his soldiers’ rampage through the terrified mob of Treveri soldiers. At first scattered singly across the hillside, their numbers gradually increased as the two men progressed towards the valley floor until the grassy surface was littered with dead and dying men, almost every one of them marked with horrific wounds to the backs of their necks and thighs where the easiest death strokes could be inflicted. Horns were blowing in the trees ahead of them, and the two men hurried down the lower slope to find their men held at bay by a line of dismounted horsemen whose lances were lowered to make a hedge of iron points, behind which the remainder of the Treveri had taken refuge.

  ‘What’s the meaning of this?’

  A crested officer stepped forward through the line of his men, and Antonius immediately recognised the Batavi prefect, Briganticus.

  ‘I’m obeying my orders, First Spear Pugno. Legatus Augusti Cerialis told me that anyone who surrendered to my cohort was to be spared.’

  Pugno shook his head, his face contorted in anger as he stepped forward to stand within inches of the other man.

  ‘These are my prisoners, Prefect!’

  The big man shook his head with a slight smile, not withdrawing an inch in the face of the legion man’s evident rage.

  ‘The victory is yours, First Spear. The men you’ve already killed as they ran are dead, but my orders are that once they’ve stopped running and thrown down their weapons, they are to live. Legatus Augusti Cerialis is looking to restore the empire’s relationship with their tribe, and that will not be possible if we murder every man who stood against us here.’

  Pugno glared back at him with stone-cold eyes, holding the stare for so long that Antonius was convinced he would fight, but eventually he nodded slowly, raising his voice to be heard by the captives.

  ‘Very well. Every coward cringing behind your men’s spears has the reward of the rest of his life in which to question his manhood. But they would be well advised to stay away from my legion from now on. As far as I’m concerned every one of their lives is forfeit to the Twenty-first.’ He turned away, gesturing to his officers to follow him. ‘Finish off their wounded, and send our bandage carriers to do what they can for our own. This battle is over, and the Twenty-first can once again hold its head up in the company of our sister legions! Blood and glory!’

  7

  Germania, May AD 70

  Marius woke with a start from confused dreams, shivering uncontrollably with whatever malaise had entered his body when Bairaz’s blade had cut his thigh open. Sitting up, ignoring the growling of his empty stomach, he untied the now filthy strip of wool that had at least stopped the flow of blood for long enough that the wound had scabbed over, grimacing at the yellow tinge to the skin on either side of the ugly gash. His thigh was hot to the touch, and when he staggered to his feet the pain that resulted made him gag loudly before he managed to control the reflex.

  ‘My time to die may be at hand. And if it is then I ask that the Rich Father receives my spirit into the Underworld and guides me to meet my ancestors.’ He laughed bitterly, looking about him at the empty forest in which he was hopelessly lost. ‘Although I think it more likely that I’ll be met by the spirits of all the men I’ve killed, eager to have their—’

  He froze, realising with a start that a man was squatting in the shadow of a birch tree a dozen paces from where he had slept, studying him with alert, intelligent eyes. Dressed in a leather tunic coat that was black with age and ingrained dirt, his boots were sturdy and well made, evidently Roman in origin, and his heavy fur cloak looked to Marius’s untrained eye to have been cut in one piece from the body of either a wolf or a bear. Long hair was tied back away from a face that was seamed with the lines of long experience, and to the Roman he seemed a man past his prime and yet evidently still physically capable, scarred knuckles resting on the hilts of a pair of long hunting knives, an unstrung bow and its accompanying quiver of arrows laid on the forest floor at his feet beside a small pack. The Roman looked about him for his sword, only to realise that it was lying at the German’s feet. Swaying, he laughed with the black humour of a man who knew he was already dead.

  ‘Been watching me, have you? Having a good laugh at the stupid Roman?’

  The German stared back at him in silence, hard blue eyes in an immobile face, and Marius laughed softly, subsiding back onto the ground on which he had slept.

  ‘You don’t speak Latin then. I suppose I should be grateful you didn’t kill me in my sleep …’ He shook his head in dark amusement. ‘Although you might have been doing me a favour had you done so. I’m fucked, from the look of my leg.’

  ‘Your blood is poison.’

  Marius raised an eyebrow.

  ‘So you do speak Latin.’

  The older man nodded impassively.

  ‘Speak Latin when sell fur with Roman. Your blood is poison. Perhaps you live. Perhaps you die. I help you.’

  The Roman untied his bandage, pointing to the angry wound and the sickened flesh around it.

  ‘You can make this better? How?’

  The hunter pointed to the birch tree in whose shadow he was squatting.

  ‘Watchful tree. It clean wound.’

  Marius shook his head uncomprehendingly.

  ‘Why? Why would you help a Roman?’

  The answer was delivered with the same deadpan expression as before.

  ‘Here in forest is no Roman or tribe man. Here in forest is only man. You need help, I give you help. If you live, you give me help. My name Beran. Mean bear, in you speak. You name?’

  The Roman shrugged, another bout of feverish shivering racking his body.

  ‘My name is Marius, and if you can make this fever go away then I’ll give you all the help you ask of me.’

  He subsided onto the forest floor, shaking with the fever’s renewed onset, staring helplessly up at the hunter as he took off his fur cloak and draped it across the helpless Roman’s body.

  ‘You be warm. I build fire.’

  He turned away and walked back to the birch tree, putting out a hand to touch its trunk and speaking quietly, stroking the bark as he talked.

  ‘You’re talking …’ Marius shuddered through another spasm of uncontrollable shivering, ‘to a tree?’

  Beran answered him without turning away from the tree.

  ‘Watchful tree sees all. Is living thing, like bear or wolf. I tell tree you good man, ask it spirit help clean wound.’

  ‘You told it …’ Marius swallowed his amusement at the idea of a man talking to a tree, knowing that the German held the power of life and death over him, ‘that I’m a good man? If you knew how many men I’ve killed in the last year …’

  Beran shook his head, still stroking the tree’s bark.

  ‘You good man. I know it. Have watch you since you escape Batavi. Watch you help other Roman die. You hard man, but you good man
.’

  ‘You were watching?’

  The German laughed.

  ‘This forest my home. Not Roman home. Not Batavi home. Not Bructeri home. My home. And no man come my home without I know. Now you be still. I bleed tree to make luppi – is drink to make strong. And I cut branch from watchful tree, put in fire, make kol. Kol is burn wood, black, yes? I use kol, clean wound.’

  ‘You’re going to heal me with charcoal. That’ll be something to tell the medic …’ Marius shuddered again as the fever sank its claws deeper into him. ‘The med …’

  He felt his eyes closing, unable to resist, and surrendered to the sickness that was burning him alive.

  Augusta Trevorum, May AD 70

  ‘Men of the First and Sixteenth Legions …’

  Pugno snorted derisively.

  ‘Cunts.’

  If Cerialis heard the expletive, which the veteran first spear had made no attempt to disguise, he failed to show even a hint of concern. Antonius sneaked a swift glance over his shoulder at the ranks of men standing behind the Twenty-first’s officers, but despite the fact that their first spear’s comments were plainly audible to the closest among them, not a single face was anything other than perfectly stoic.

  ‘… you have chosen, after a period of time in which to reflect on the error of your ways, to return to your duty in serving the emperor. You have spontaneously taken the sacramentum, swearing fidelity and loyalty to the service of our emperor Vespasianus. And you have absented yourselves from your enforced service to the so-called “empire of the Gauls”, presenting yourselves to me here today in order to receive the empire’s judgement on your actions, a judgement you have stated you will accept no matter what it may be.’

  The Twenty-first’s senior centurion shook his head slowly, staring at the tremulous ranks of men facing them and voicing his own verdict in the same unconcerned tone of voice as before.

  ‘Useless cunts. And you should all be fucking crucified, here and now.’