RETRIBUTION

by Anthony Riches

  ‘Wound clean. Poison gone.’ The gash was scabbed over with a thick crust of dried blood, no longer leaking pus and fluid, and the skin around it had reverted to its natural hue. ‘I wrap wound with kol from burn wood of watchful tree. Kol take poison from blood. Beran burn kol, destroy poison, heal you body.’

  Marius nodded tiredly, exhausted despite his long period of unconsciousness.

  ‘You made charcoal from the birch tree and used it to suck the pus from my wound. Clever.’

  Beran shrugged.

  ‘Using wood of watchful tree known my people since old time. I believe watchful tree, watchful tree help me.’ He held a cup up to the Roman’s mouth. ‘Drink.’

  Marius sipped, pulling a face at the taste.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Is sap of watchful tree. I cut tree, bleed sap, mix with hot water. Make you strong.’

  He sipped again as the hunter put the cup against his lips, swallowing the bitter fluid.

  ‘It would benefit from a little honey.’

  ‘Honey. Hah! I leave you, find honey, wolves eat you while I gone. Better bad taste than wolves eat you, yes?’

  The Roman nodded ruefully.

  ‘You’re right. And thank you.’

  Beran smiled, wearing the expression as if it were a rare occurrence.

  ‘I take thanks in pell.’

  ‘Pell?’

  The German’s smile broadened, and he reached out a hand to lift the corner of the animal skin that had covered Marius during the period of his unconsciousness.

  ‘Pell. Skin of animal. Pell make Beran Roman gold, Beran use gold buy good Roman iron. And horon. Beran like horon.’

  ‘Horon?’ Beran put a hand to his crotch, winking at the Roman knowingly. ‘Ah. Weapons and women.’ He smiled wearily back at the hunter. ‘It’s not all about trees then? I was starting to wonder.’

  The German nodded.

  ‘Weapon and woman make Beran happy. When you heal you help Beran take pell from wolf and bear. I teach you … what is word?’

  ‘Hunt?’

  ‘Yes. I teach you hunt. You good spirit, make good hunt. You make Beran hunt brother.’

  The Roman smiled weakly.

  ‘I doubt I could hunt a mouse at the moment.’

  Beran lifted the cup again, the unaccustomed smile creasing his face again.

  ‘You drink blood of watchful tree. I make you strong, hunt brother. Then you go find honey.’

  Gallia Belgica, May AD 70

  ‘First Spear Pugno, sir! Centurion Julius asks if you could join him at the east gate. There’s a man there claiming to be a legion first spear.’

  Pugno stared in disbelief at the watch officer who had been entrusted with the untimely message for a moment, then raised an eyebrow at Antonius. The two men had just completed their rounds of the army’s latest marching camp, and two bowls of stew were steaming on the table at which they were about to seat themselves.

  ‘Just when I thought I’d finally got a chance to take my boots off for the night. Come on, let’s go and see whether this is a fantasist with a death wish or the real thing. You …’ he pointed to the nearest of his camp slaves, ‘keep this food warm for us, we’ll be back in as long as it takes to walk to the gate, put this latest fantasist to the sword and walk back again.’

  As the army had advanced warily to the east behind a screen of scouts, trailing the rebels whose camp they had overrun only to find it deserted so recently that the ashes of the watch fires had still been warm, they had found the land before them empty except for the occasional farmer too attached to his land to flee from the oncoming legions. Most days had yielded a crop of sheepish deserters returning to face the inevitable justice. The majority of them had done so meekly and in the hope of a return to service encouraged by the traitor legions’ apparent pardon, but one man had strolled in clad in the scale armour of a centurion and had received swift and uncompromisingly harsh military justice when his attempted subterfuge had been revealed by the discovery of the name of the armour’s real owner engraved letter by letter into the faces of the thumbnail-sized armour plates on his back.

  Reaching the marching camp’s eastern gate, the two men found themselves confronted by the hulking figure of a man wearing nothing more than military-issue boots and a tunic, standing, apparently unconcerned, under the spears of a pair of legionaries while their centurion waited to one side with a sword held in one hand.

  ‘I took this off him. It’s legion issue, nothing special, but it’s one of ours alright.’

  ‘That sword is sacred to me. I will use it to take my revenge upon the Batavi.’

  All three officers turned to look at the big man, and Antonius realised that he recognised the newcomer.

  ‘This man is what he says he is. You were one of the officers commanding the defence of the Old Camp, weren’t you? Aquillius, is it?’

  ‘Yes. I am Aquillius.’

  Pugno shook his head in disbelief.

  ‘You’re the one who escaped death when the Batavi destroyed our army at the battle by the river? You’ve been reported as having been killed when the Batavians took your surrender and then massacred your legions. The men they released to bring us news of that disaster say that you were being forced to kill your own men in the fortress’s arena when they were turned loose.’

  ‘That’s why the sword will be my instrument of vengeance. I was forced to fight in the arena and kill fourteen legionaries with it, and I promised each of them that I would find his family and tell them that their man died well.’

  Pugno shrugged, putting a knuckle to his eye.

  ‘Boohoo. Perhaps you shouldn’t have surrendered.’

  Aquillius turned a stone-like stare on his fellow officer.

  ‘And perhaps you should have made more haste to relieve us, rather than mincing around Italy feeling sorry for yourselves after being defeated at Cremona?’ Something in his face froze Pugno where he stood, rather than obeying his instinct to punish the insult. ‘When men are reduced to eating grass and boot leather there aren’t many alternatives, even for the bravest of us. I wonder how you would have faced that choice? And if you’re accusing me of being a coward you might want to consider the fact that I could bite your throat out before these children behind me could move a muscle to stop me.’

  Antonius stepped between the two men before Pugno could overcome his momentary disconcertion.

  ‘Given that this man is undoubtedly a legion first spear, I suggest that we postpone that fight until a better time? Let’s get him equipped and in front of the legatus augusti. I’m sure Petillius Cerialis will want to hear his story at first hand.’

  Cerialis greeted Aquillius with appropriate respect, smiling at the vine stick in the first spear’s hand.

  ‘Old habits die hard, it seems, First Spear Aquillius. Does the feeling of twisted wood in your hand comfort you, given what you’ve been through?’

  ‘It reminds me of who I am, Legatus Augusti. I have spent most of the last two months hiding from the Germans and Gauls, living off the land and working my way south along the folds and seams in the country, always promising myself that I would regain the company of my peers and become a centurion once again.’

  The general nodded gravely.

  ‘And here you are, returned from the dead. Not for the first time, I believe. We can only imagine the things you’ve had to do to survive. Given your loyal service to the emperor I would be happy to grant you your release from service, honourably of course, and—’

  Aquillius raised a hand.

  ‘I cannot accept your offer, Legatus Augusti, even though I made a promise to tell every one of their families how they died like men when the time came. Much as I wish to be released to fulfil that oath …’

  He paused as Cerialis shook his head.

  ‘Is that wise, First Spear? Surely they can only hate you for what you did to their men?’

  The big man shrugged.

  ‘That is as may be. I swore an oat
h, and so I must carry out my promise to those of my comrades I was forced to kill. But before I can do so there is another oath I must fulfil.’

  Cerialis raised an eyebrow, evidently amused by the big man’s solemnity.

  ‘Another oath? You have been busy.’

  Ignoring the general’s attempt at humour, Aquillius nodded seriously.

  ‘Yes, Legatus Augusti, another oath. On the day of our surrender, after I had been forced to murder those fourteen men in the arena …’

  He waited in silence as Cerialis turned to his fellow legati.

  ‘I never cease to be amazed at the depths to which this apparently civilised man Civilis has sunk. And to think that he once dined with me in Rome, without ever providing any hint as to the barbarism that lurked in his spirit.’ He waved a gracious hand to Aquillius. ‘My apologies, First Spear, please do continue.’

  ‘Yes, Legatus Augusti. As I lay, bound hand and foot in a cell, waiting for the dawn and my inevitable death the next day, a Batavian centurion came to me. He was a man I had met before, briefly, a wolf-priest.’

  ‘A … wolf-priest?’

  Antonius stepped forward.

  ‘An order of priests within the Batavian cohorts who also serve as centurions, Legatus Augusti. They wear the pelts of wolves they have killed on their helmets as a mark of their rank. First Spear Aquillius, what did this man say to you?’

  ‘He told me that he is both blessed and cursed by dreams, in which he sees things that are yet to happen. He told me that he witnessed their defeat at Gelduba many times in his sleep before it came to pass, never knowing what it was he was seeing until the moment that disaster struck. And he told me that he has seen me by your side, Legatus Augusti, on the day that will decide the destiny of the Batavian people, when they finally come to surrender to your army. He made me swear to find you, and offer you my service in whatever role you will give me. And he had me promise to answer his call, on that day, and to do whatever it is that he calls upon me for. To which I agreed, once I was sure that he would not seek to make me break the sacramentum of loyalty to the emperor.’

  Cerialis stared at him for a moment, clearly nonplussed.

  ‘Very well, let me see if I’ve understood your story. You were freed by a Batavian officer who predicted his people’s surrender from a dream he had?’ Aquillius nodded. ‘I see. And he freed you on the condition that you would seek me out, in order to be at my side on the day of that surrender? And he expects that when he calls upon you, you will do whatever it is that he commands?’

  Aquillius inclined his head.

  ‘Exactly, Legatus Augusti.’

  ‘And you, as a man of honour, having bought your freedom with that oath, intend to honour it completely.’

  The senior centurion met his gaze unwaveringly.

  ‘I do. It is the only way that I can free myself to fulfil the oath I made to the men I killed that day in the Old Camp’s arena, while those barbarians howled and bayed for my blood.’

  The Roman shrugged, his lips twisting in an amused grimace.

  ‘You’re very free with your oaths, aren’t you?’ The big man bowed his head silently. ‘Well in that case I suppose you’d better take command of my bodyguard. You can swear an oath to defend my person to the death!’ Smirking at his own joke, he nodded at the hulking centurion. ‘Yes, I think that’s the best way to ensure that you’re at my side when the day of the Batavians’ surrender comes to pass, and at that moment I shall release you from that oath to go and fulfil the other two. Or at least the first of them.’ He shrugged, looking around the room at his officers. ‘After all, if this … what was he … ah yes, if this wolf-priest has predicted our victory over his people in his dreams, then it seems the very least I can do if we’re to make that dream of their surrender become a reality, doesn’t it?’

  Germania Inferior, May AD 70

  ‘Let’s have a song.’ Adalwin looked at the men marching alongside him with a hopeful look. ‘The bull’s in the corn, eh?’

  He took a deep breath and starting singing.

  ‘The bull’s in the field, the bull’s in the corn,

  The bull’s seen the cows and the bull’s got the—’

  ‘No.’

  The soldier fell silent at Levonhard’s blunt statement, shaking his head sadly.

  ‘I’m only trying to cheer us all up. We’ve been three days on the road marching twenty-five miles a day, and in all that time we’ve not said more than a dozen words.’

  The soldier shrugged.

  ‘What were you expecting, happy smiles and laughter all the way? We lost two men getting that fucking gate open, one of them hardly old enough to serve the tribe. Hundreds of men died trying to force their way through into the city, and all for nothing, just like at Gelduba! It seems to me that we men of the cohorts did all the fighting and dying, trying to deliver a half-arsed plan cooked up by Kiv and his Gaulish friends, rather than doing the sensible thing and waiting for the rest of the army to get to us. And where were the men of the Guard while we were fighting and dying? Just where they are now! Behind us! They’re behind us on the march and behind us on the battlefield! The only time they ever get in front of us is when there’s rations to be issued!’

  The men around him muttered their agreement in a collective rumble of opinion. The army was marching east as fast as their feet could take them, their path cleared by what remained of the cohorts’ mounted strength, the depleted cohorts, now barely fifteen hundred strong, in the vanguard, the German and Gallic tribes following on behind them and the elite soldiers of the Batavi Guard in their customary place at the column’s rear.

  ‘I’d be careful if I were you, Levonhard.’ Lanzo spoke up from his place in the tent party’s second rank. ‘You might be the ugliest bastard in the century, but even your face wouldn’t benefit from getting a visit from Hramn, never mind your back if he decides to make an example of you. You let him hear you saying any of that and he’ll have the shit beaten out of you at the very least, just to make sure the rest of us mind our manners.’

  ‘But the centurion—’

  ‘Should fucking well know better. That’s all. And if you’re stupid enough to go repeating what he says in the privacy of the century then you’ll drop him in the shit alongside you.’

  Levonhard shook his head angrily.

  ‘We always used to say what we thought, back when Scar was prefect! Why should we abandon the traditions that have served us well since my grandfather’s time?’

  Lataz spoke without taking his eyes off the road before him.

  ‘Because times change. And people change. Back when Frijaz and I were young soldiers, Kivilaz was a good man to be around, full of the joy of being one of us warriors, and even if he was the son of a man who would have been our king if not for the Romans, you’d not have known it to hear him speak. But now …’

  He fell silent, and his brother spoke, the depth of their mutual loss all too evident in his voice.

  ‘Power changes a man. Some men get stronger, become more than they were. Kiv shrunk under it, and lost what it was that made us love him. And Hramn …’

  ‘Hramn always was a bastard.’ The men around Adalwin looked at each other in surprise at his interjection, his voice dull with anger. ‘He was my centurion when I first served, and I came to hate him soon enough. Always going out of his way to make life hard for the new lads, never happy with a joke at his expense, not even a gentle one. When he was chosen to go to Rome and join the Bodyguard I hoped I’d never see him again.’

  A moment’s silence followed his outburst before Lanzo spoke again.

  ‘And that’s all very well, but the fact is that they’re our officers and that’s that. We have no choice but to do what they tell us, do we?’ He waited for a moment. ‘No, we don’t. As much as we might think this whole sorry revolt is fucked we have no option but to follow Kiv, yes, and Hramn too, wherever they take us, and to do whatever they tell us to do. Because to do anything else is mutiny, and
no man in the history of our tribe has ever refused to carry out the orders of the men the tribe places over us. So stop this bitching and if you’ve got nothing good to say then just say nothing. We’ve come too far together for me to let any of you end up on a punishment frame with your back hanging off, not just because you don’t know when to keep your mouths shut.’

  Shouting from the column’s head caught their attention, the century’s men swiftly pulling on their helmets and unslinging shields from their carrying positions without breaking stride or waiting for orders, their preparations the swift and economical movements of men long since past any need for conscious thought when the call to action sounded. A trumpet call halted their march, and a moment later Kivilaz and Hramn rode past them, hurrying to reach the column’s head.

  ‘News from the Ubii, I expect.’

  ‘News from Kiv’s new favourite boys more likely.’

  They turned to find Egilhard behind them, having walked down the century’s length to join his friends. Levonhard frowned at him.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  The chosen man grimaced, his eyes red-rimmed from the lack of sleep that had troubled him since his brother’s death.

  ‘I heard the officers discussing it. Seems that there’s a warband from the Chauci and Frisii tribes that he billeted on the Ubii to make sure they hold firm to their oaths to support us. He believes that they’re the best warriors he has left, so he’s marching us north to join up with them, in readiness to set up a battle with the Romans on some carefully chosen piece of ground.’

  ‘See?’ Levonhard spat on the road at his feet. ‘Now that he’s wasted most of our strength we’re no longer the pride of his army, just mouths to feed. I reckon—’ He staggered back as Egilhard snapped a punch into the space between his helmet’s cheek guards. ‘What the f—’

  The young chosen man stepped forward with both fists raised.

  ‘Shut your mouth! My brother gave his life for the tribe back there, and I won’t have you pissing on his sacrifice just because it’s getting tough. If you don’t want to fight for the tribe then just walk away!’