Draco nodded.
‘I have a man in mind. And yes, I accept your generous offer, Legatus Augusti. I will rule the tribe in full cooperation with the legion officers you appoint to supervise our recovery from this disaster, and I will ensure that we provide as many battle-ready cohorts as possible given the number of men who have survived this unfortunate war, once my warriors have had time to recover from the last few months.’ He drew himself up and saluted. ‘And now, with your permission, I’ll go and get about readying the tribe for winter.’
Cerialis gestured to the tent’s door.
‘Thank you, Magistrate Draco. There’ll be a formal proclamation posted before nightfall, but in the meantime just tell your people you speak with my authority. That ought to be enough when combined with your own natural authority.’
Alcaeus paused at the door, turning back with a question clearly on his lips.
‘Centurion? Is there something I can do for you?’
The priest came to attention.
‘Forgive me, Legatus Augusti, I have a question regarding your centurion. Aquillius, I mean.’
Cerialis nodded.
‘I was waiting for you to ask. He told me that it was you who freed him, and that you believed he had a place in the plans of the gods for your prince. Do you still believe that?’
The Batavi nodded.
‘Yes, sir. It happened just as I saw it in my dreams. I was wondering if any sign of him has been found?’
Cerialis looked to Pugno, who shook his head with absolute certainty.
‘Your prefect’s body was found on a sandbar a mile downstream. Drowned, of course. As must also be the case with Aquillius. No man can swim any distance wearing that much iron, never mind the fact that he’d also taken a spear blade in the back, and we didn’t see either of them come up for air once they were in the water. My fleet officers tell me that the river will spit him out eventually, when it gets bored with playing with his corpse.’
Alcaeus nodded.
‘Thank you, First Spear, I’m sure you’re right. And at least he fulfilled his destiny before he died.’
With the Batavi officers out of the tent, Legatus Longus looked at his superior with a slightly puzzled expression.
‘I know the man makes a good first impression, Petillius Cerialis, but is making an enemy soldier his tribe’s magistrate a wise idea, even if he is retired? Surely that position should go to one of our own, if we want to be assured of total obedience?’
The senior officer sat back in his chair with a beatific smile.
‘Ordinarily I would agree wholeheartedly, but in Prefect Draco’s case there’s something I know that you don’t. Alfenius Varus can elucidate, I suspect.’
His senatorial colleague raised an eyebrow.
‘Have you and our colleague Varus been keeping secrets from your officers, Legatus Augusti?’
Varus answered, his tone light.
‘Not from choice. The Legatus Augusti and I were briefed before we left Rome, taken into the confidence of the emperor’s right-hand man Mucianus on the strict condition that what he told us was to be kept strictly to ourselves, Petillius Cerialis because he needed to know and myself to brief his replacement if such a thing came to pass. But I suppose that we can trust you and your first spear. And if we can’t, then both of you will be exploring rather lower strata of the military rank structure than you’ve become used to, won’t you?’
‘Magistrate. Should I bow? Presumably you’ll need some of those men the Romans employ to walk around in front of them with rods and axes?’
Draco eyed Alcaeus pityingly in the afternoon’s drizzle.
‘I’m not Roman, Priest, I’m Batavi. And I don’t need lictors to scare respect out of my brother tribesmen, I can do that myself, thank you. But since you evidently find the idea of my reluctantly agreeing to rule the tribe for a few months amusing, you clearly don’t realise that the joke’s on you as much as it is on me. Prefect.’
The centurion stared at him for a moment.
‘What?’
‘You heard me. The cohorts need leadership, what’s left of the guard need some sense beating into them if we’re not to have some idiot or other start summoning the memory of Hramn and Kivilaz, and all too soon we’ll need to start standing up cohorts for service elsewhere in the empire. It’s going to be a shock to our men when they realise just how far from home they’ll be serving, and how infrequently they’re going to see their families. There’ll need to be a training staff retained here, of course, and every man in what’s left of the army will want to serve in it and stay here, rather than being posted to somewhere we’ve never even heard of for years at a time, so all things considered I’d say we’re going to need a man who can combine good-natured diplomacy with vigorous discipline when the occasion calls for it. Wouldn’t you?’
Alcaeus shook his head in only partially-feigned disgust.
‘I’d imagined that I’d be allowed a little peace, now that we’re done with killing Romans, instead of which you’re offering me the chance to be hated by most of the army for choosing them to go away and kill the empire’s enemies in far-off places, never to see their women and children again.’
‘The cohorts need leadership, Alcaeus. Not for very long because they’ll be marching away come spring, probably never to return if I understand the way the Romans plan to manage their auxiliary forces in the wake of this disaster. They’ll separate soldier from home, so that there’ll be no sympathy with the local population of wherever it is that they’re sent, and when they’ve been in one place for long enough to put down roots and start to feel that sympathy, they’ll get moved somewhere new again. So, once you’ve rebuilt as many cohorts as can be formed with the manpower we have left, you can concentrate on training new soldiers and building new cohorts as our youth matures into men, but to earn that relative relaxation you’re going to have to cope with all the problems that come home to roost after a war is finished.’
‘Caring for the wounded. Providing for the families of the dead. Dealing with the men who go mad because of what they’ve seen.’
Draco nodded.
‘All that. And probably more. And this isn’t a request, in case you were wondering, it’s an order. I can’t rule without a strong prefect to keep my soldiers in hand, and you’re the best man I have left.’
Alcaeus nodded, his lips twisted in distaste.
‘I’ll do it. But there are two conditions.’
Draco raised amused eyebrow.
‘Conditions? On an order from a magistrate to his military leader? We’ll see. What are they?’
‘Firstly, I get to decide what I do once the cohorts are ready to march for their new duty stations. I may not want to get fat and lazy supervising the training of boys.’
Draco shrugged.
‘Agreed. If you’re stupid enough to want to go and be a senior centurion under a snotty-nosed, soft-palmed Roman prefect who probably doesn’t know his prick from a pilum, then you’ll be very welcome to do so. I’m sure there’ll be a queue of men who’ll be delighted to take your place getting fat and lazy, after the events of the last year. And the second condition?’
‘It’s simple. You have to admit that it was you feeding information to the Romans.’ The veteran stared at him with hard, calculating eyes, one hand grasping the top of his staff, but Alcaeus shook his head with an equally uncompromising expression, his right hand resting lightly on the handle of his dagger. ‘You won’t need the blade you keep hidden in that stick. And if you do try to draw it, I’ll have you bleeding out before the point clears its sheath. I’m not seeking vengeance, but I do want to know why.’
Draco nodded, leaning on the staff to render its threat negligible and smiling thinly as the priest allowed his hand to fall from the hilt of his sword.
‘It’s a fair question. How did you know? Another of your dreams?’
‘I didn’t know, not until I saw you dealing with Cerialis just now. I have some small gift fo
r reading men, and you looked … at home with the Romans. As if you’d never truly left Rome’s service. And then I thought about the disaster at Gelduba, and who was most obviously positioned to have known about the attack on their legions and in a position to send a messenger to warn them. And the most obvious answer was you, although it couldn’t have been you because you were the man set to hunt down the traitor. And then I thought back to something you said to my man Egilhard, or at least in his presence, not knowing just what a sharp blade he conceals beneath that apparent simplicity. He told me you said that Kivilaz was always looking for glory, sometimes despite orders to the contrary, and you added under your breath that you’d always feared that he would lead us to disaster.’ He stared hard at Draco, challenging the veteran to deny his accusation. ‘And once I knew in my heart that it was you all along then the logic followed as easily as day follows night. So tell me, why?’
The older man pulled a wry face.
‘The same Roman who came to convince Kivilaz to lead the tribe in rebellion, Vespasianus’s associate Plinius, took me aside one evening and asked me, straight out, whether I believed that Kivilaz could be trusted to end a revolt when it was no longer needed. And I thought back to the times he wilfully disobeyed orders as a young centurion, when I was his prefect in Britannia. That eye he lost? He’d have gone to his grave with the two eyes he was born with if he’d followed orders at the battle that did for the Iceni. The way the old soldiers who were there told it to me, Prefect Swana gave the order for our attack to pause, and to allow the Fourteenth Gemina to pass through us and take up their share of the fight, as he’d agreed with their legatus, but Kivilaz was having none of it. He led his cohort forward instead, eager for glory, and managed to damage our relationship with the legion and lose an eye, and get dozens more men killed into the bargain. And so I told Plinius that no, I didn’t think he could necessarily be trusted to haul on the tribe’s rope when the time came, and that it was more likely he’d be the one driving us on to wage war.’
‘And this Roman asked you to spy for the empire?’
‘He asked me, since you keep using the word spy, to act as a go-between for the two sides when the time came, and to do whatever I could to reduce the damage done to our relationship with Rome, in the event that the revolt he hoped for failed to end when its purpose was at an end. The decision to do the things I did was entirely my own.’
‘But why? I can’t understand what would inspire a man of your standing to betray the tribe. I lost friends as a consequence of your message to Flaccus, good men who died needlessly. My own chosen man Banon among them.’
Draco nodded soberly.
‘Yes, doubtless you did. But the thing you’re not considering is how hard the Romans would have come down on us if I hadn’t given them the warning they needed to defend themselves from the attack Kivilaz ordered. Just imagine if they’d been in camp when you arrived. You’d have slaughtered all three legions out of hand in the madness of battle, and put Rome’s undying enmity squarely on the back of the cohorts. Instead of which, one of those legions marched south to the Winter Camp and the other two surrendered to the Gauls, and were ultimately returned to Rome more or less intact. Which means that Roman pride was spared the indignity of another Varus disaster. And no, the Old Camp legions don’t count, because the histories will undoubtedly be carefully written to say that they were murdered by the tribes from across the river, not by the Batavi, in the interests of our alliance with them. We would have lost this war whether we’d won at Gelduba or not, but if we had won that fight the reckoning we’d be facing now would be exactly what Kivilaz feared the most. Our tribe, Alcaeus, would cease to exist. All of the usual treatment of a captured enemy who has chosen to resist Rome would have been visited on our people. Enslavement. Rape. Resettlement. Instead, we’re to be greeted back into the fold like the errant sons we will be portrayed as, tempted to fight a war we could never win by a rogue prince who realised the error of his barbaric ways and manfully paid the price by falling on his own sword. I’d call that a good result, and if I had to compromise my loyalty to the tribe to save it, that’s simply what I had to do. If you have a problem with that I suggest you draw that sword and use it, then face the consequences, both for yourself and our people.’
The wolf-priest stared out into the grey afternoon for a moment, then shook his head.
‘What would be the point? Killing you won’t bring Banon back, or any of the others. Hercules can judge you, when your time comes, not me. And who’s to say you’re not right in your assessment of what would have happened without your intervention. This will remain between us.’
Draco nodded inscrutably.
‘Very well, Prefect. And now that you have command of the army, you can act to root out any last vestiges of Hramn’s influence.’
‘Yes. I’m going to remove all distinctions between the cohorts, the guard and the militia, and form new cohorts with a blend of all three.’
‘And your man Achilles? Do you expect him to survive the ire of men who still loved Kivilaz at the end, for all his failures and faults?’
Alcaeus pondered the question for a moment before replying.
‘The boy’s risen a long way in a short time. He was a recruit not much more than a year ago, and already he’s a chosen man, but I don’t think he’s suited to it. All that pushing and shoving at the back of the century, that’s not for him. He’s a front rank man, pure and simple, a leader of men, not a driver of sheep.’
‘You’re going to demote him back to the ranks?’
The priest laughed tersely.
‘Demote him? Of course not. I’m going to promote him to centurion. There must be a dozen positions vacant, given the losses we’ve taken, and he’s clearly born to it, now that the shyness has been beaten out of him. Of course there’ll be men who’ll hate him for what he did to Kivilaz, men who’ll want to see him dead. By making him an officer I’ll send them a very clear signal as to what will happen to anyone that raises a hand against him. We need to heal the divisions between us, Magistrate, and I can’t see any better way of starting that healing than standing by the man whose actions this morning rid us of Hramn’s malign influence.’
Draco nodded.
‘Neither can I. I just hope he’s as fast with his iron as you say, because he’s more than likely going to need to be, one dark night. Very well, Prefect, you’re dismissed. We have a homeland to rebuild, and the sooner we prove to the Romans we’re serious about fulfilling our end of the bargain we just agreed with them, the sooner they’ll be inclined to start helping us. You can go and make a start by finding me the cohorts that are buried in the remnants of the army that Kivilaz led to disaster.’
11
Germania, November AD 70
‘You set on this, I think. Is true?’
Marius looked at Beran, nodding slowly at the German’s question.
‘Yes. I have to go back.’
‘Forest your home now. Save your life.’
‘And I’m grateful to you for that, but …’
‘You not understand. Watchful tree save your life, not Beran. Forest save you life, now you belong forest. Now you hunter, like Beran. You no need for legion. And legion say you dead. New life in forest, why not? Take pell from beasts, trade with Rome, enjoy Rome horon. Good life. You got woman wait?’
Marius shook his head.
‘No, there’s no one waiting for me. And I understand. I could walk away from my old life and enjoy this one. Simple and clean, without the dangers of revolts and mutinies. The gods know I’d like to do just that. But …’
‘Legion call you.’
‘Yes.’ The Roman shook his head with a rueful smile. ‘Let me tell you a story from my world that might help you to understand.’
Beran gestured for him to continue, and Marius looked up at the trees above their campfire before speaking again.
‘When I was just a centurion, before I became a first spear and led the Fifth Legion, my fi
rst spear was a man called Decimus. He really was the tenth child in the family, which meant that he was fighting as soon as he was old enough to stand. If I tell you that he was the only man I was ever truly scared of, you’ll have some idea of, what a bastard he was. Anyway, when the legion’s legatus, the man appointed to command it by the emperor—’
‘Beran think first spear lead soldiers?’
Marius smiled knowingly.
‘So did Decimus, you can be sure of that. But the legatus was a senator, one of a few hundred men who ruled the empire—’
‘Beran think emperor rule empire?’
‘Yes, well let’s say that he can’t do it all on his own, so these rich men help him. Anyway, this legatus—’
‘Rich man, help emperor rule empire?’
‘Yes. He decided to support his general who wanted to be the emperor. So—’
‘This man challenge emperor to fight. If he kill, then he emperor?’
Marius realised that his story was going to be more difficult than he had expected.
‘Not a challenge in person. He decided to march his legions and their auxiliaries over the mountains to Italy and fight a great battle. So most of my legion went with him, with Decimus as their first spear, and they fought a great battle at a place called Cremona and won the war.’
‘So new emperor. What happen to other emperor?’
‘He killed himself, we were told.’
Beran shrugged.
‘Weak man. A strong man fights.’ He yawned. ‘Your story hard to understand. How this explain you go back legion?’
Marius nodded.
‘You’ll see clearly enough. Anyway, the new emperor marched his army to Rome and took power.’
‘Many horon for him. If I emperor, I take any horon I want.’
The Roman grinned.
‘And you’re not alone in that expectation. Anyway, a few months later a new army marched on Rome, under the command of another general.’
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