‘Yes, we could, Kivilaz. But even with half their strength gone south to fight for the throne there are still a lot more legionaries in the Old Camp than there are men of fighting age left in our city. If I’d used our men to protect you on the way home, and dead Romans were the result, then it would be our entire tribe that would stand accused of treason by the centurions who seem determined to see your head on a stake, and not just yours. And that’s not something the council of elders is willing to see happen.’
Kivilaz turned his head and fixed his one good eye on his subordinate.
‘So you’re still loyal to the empire even after all this, are you? Even after you were sent home in shame by an emperor not worthy of the title? Even after my brother was killed out of hand without a semblance of a trial? And even after I was beaten and sent to Rome to be judicially murdered, and when that failed was arrested again to allow a collection of power-crazed legion nobodies with the intention of pushing their toy emperor into killing me on their behalf? It’s lucky for me that they didn’t count on him deciding that he’d be better off maintaining friendly relations with the Batavi, rather than needlessly provoking the tribe, and decided to let me live, or they’d have done the job on me themselves while I was at their mercy in the fortress cells.
‘The legatus commanding the Old Camp came to see me last night, late, when the visit was less likely to be noticed, I guess. His name is Lupercus, and it turns out I know him from a long time back, in Britannia, and that fight with the British tribes to get over the river Medui. I saved his life that day, as he was quick to remind me, and here he was repaying the favour. He told me he’d counselled Vitellius that my execution could destroy Rome’s relationship with the Batavi for ever, and make it necessary for a campaign to bring the Island under direct military rule. A campaign that would require two or possibly three legions if it wasn’t to end in an ignominious disaster.’
‘Two or three legions they don’t have.’
‘Exactly. So the deal on offer was simple. My life would be spared if I were willing to return home and encourage the tribe to support Vitellius. Which, of course, I agreed. The big question now is what sort of lengths Lupercus’s centurions might go to, once they come to the realisation that Vitellius isn’t going to do them any favours in the matter, not now that he’s wearing the purple and doesn’t need their support quite as much as he did. Which is why, Decurion, I’d have been a good deal happier with an escort of my cohort’s proudest and most bloodthirsty guardsmen than just you two.’
Hramn looked at him in surprise.
‘You’re going to continue calling us guardsmen?’
His new prefect nodded soberly.
‘Yes, Hramn, I am. You were guardsmen in Rome, and you’ll still be guardsmen here in Germania. Galba may have dismissed you but there was no censure of any man involved, just an instruction that your service in Rome was terminated and you were to come north and serve under my command. And no alternative title was either offered or imposed. So guardsmen you were and guardsmen you will remain. My guardsmen, the Batavi Guard. You’re still the cream of our people’s manhood, the biggest and the fiercest men in all of the eight cohorts, and I will lead you with all the pride that your name inspires. We—’
His head whipped round, as Draco raised a hand to point.
‘Well now, Kivilaz, do you think even a dozen of your guardsmen would have got us out of this?’
They had reached the hill’s summit, with a clear view to the north, to see that the road was blocked by several tent parties of auxiliary troops, their dark-red shields identifying them to the three men’s trained eyes, and the veteran laughed tersely.
‘Tungrians. Trust those legion bastards not to do their own dirty work.’
Kivilaz reined his horse in, staring at the mail-armoured men waiting in a neat line across the road.
‘How many do you see?’
Hramn’s voice was flat with the realisation that their deaths were imminent.
‘Forty.’
Draco spoke without taking his eyes off the waiting infantrymen.
‘Enough to close the road off and deal with anyone that gets uppity, but not a full century. Which leaves another forty-odd men to close the road behind us and wait in the woods to either side, in case we try to ride out of their trap.’
Kivilaz nodded.
‘Which means that if we try to run we’ll be killed without any opportunity to reason with them. Looks to me as if our best option is to go and meet them. Just not on their terms.’
He dismounted, calling out at the silent trees that lined the road.
‘Would one of you men come and hold my horse?’ After a moment’s silence, a helmeted head appeared round the trunk of a fully grown oak, just for an instant, but enough for the Batavi prince’s purposes. ‘You! Yes, you! Behind the tree! Come on, I don’t have all day!’
The Tungrian stepped out from his hiding place with a red face and walked forward with a hand on his sword’s hilt. Kivilaz grinned broadly at him, holding out his horse’s reins.
‘You won’t be needing the sword, I’m not in the mood for fighting. Today is a day for talking. Here, take these …’
He proffered the reins and smiled at the soldier’s bafflement, as the hapless auxiliary obeyed his instincts and did as the officer told him. Hramn and Draco were equally puzzled, but passed their own reins to the man and looked at Kivilaz with the expressions of men who were completely out of their depth.
‘You want to … reason … with them?’
Kivilaz grinned at the older man as if he had no care in all the world.
‘If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the last six months, Draco, it’s that when you’re in a situation where your sword, if you even still possess one, will be of no avail, then it’s time to use a deadlier weapon. Shall we?’
He strode away down the road’s gentle slope with Draco limping in his wake and Hramn walking backwards alongside the veteran, watching as men stepped out of the woods on either side and closed the trap around them.
‘Well, it’ll be a short fight if even his honeyed tongue can’t ease him out of this one.’
Draco snorted, leaning on his staff as he followed their prince towards the waiting ranks of soldiers.
‘A short fight followed by a long sleep somewhere beneath the leaves, with our people none the wiser as to where we lie, with no bodies to mourn over. Honourless bastards. At least I’ll give one or two of them the last surprise of their lives.’
Kivilaz was calling out to the men waiting for them, his voice jovially at odds with the seriousness of their predicament.
‘Greetings, brothers! It’s been a long time since I stood alongside your tribe, back in Britannia when your cohorts and those of the Batavi won the war that bitch Boudicca started, tearing the Iceni to ribbons in the course of a single hour of bloodshed! Gods, but it was good to be alive on that day, even if it did cost me the sight of an eye! Batavi and Tungri, shoulder to shoulder and fighting like men possessed, as only we can!’ He stopped in front of the century’s officer who stood waiting for him in the middle of the road, looking along the short length of the Tungrian line with a smile at the blank-faced soldiers who were staring back at him with less enmity than had been the case only a moment before. ‘Greetings Centurion! I’d ask what it is that I can do for you, but I think I can discern your purpose in being here. You’ve been given money to kill me, and these two blameless men, right? Blood gold, handed to you by a legion centurion?’
The Tungrian officer put a hand to the hilt of his sword, but Kivilaz was faster, stepping forward a pace and speaking so quietly that the men behind the centurion had to lean forward to hear him.
‘Before you draw that weapon, take a moment to think this through. In return for a few gold coins, which I’d imagine none of these men behind you will ever see, you’re not only going to murder a prince of the Batavi tribe, but you’re going to dishonour two wholly innocent men, one a former leader of t
he emperor’s German Bodyguard who is now a distinguished elder of my people, the other the man who was in command of the Bodyguard when it was so shamefully disbanded. The Bodyguard which has now been reduced in status to no more than a part of the army of Germania Inferior, when previously it was trusted to watch over the emperor’s most intimate moments, and which still contains men of your own tribe, men the Batavi have accepted into their homes without a moment’s hesitation. And when you’ve killed all three of us, men who will be sorely missed by our tribe, you’re hoping that you’ll be able to keep such a foul act of fratricide secret?’
His voice rose, pitched to indicate his incredulity.
‘Do you really believe that not one of you is going to spill this dirty little story across a beer-stained table when he’s in his cups? A tale that will be heard both by men who will delight in the tale, and at the same time by others whose faces will harden in disgust at the confirmation of something they already knew but could not prove until that moment.’
‘And how will they know of it, if nobody here is stupid enough to open his mouth and betray his brothers?’
The voice belonged to a man in the Tungrian second rank.
‘No denial then? No protestation that German brother could never turn on German brother? This really is a sad day …’ Kivilaz shook his head, staring across the line of faces. ‘A sad day for you, no less than for the Batavi people. When you kill me, you will at least grant me peace from the constant persecutions of the Romans, whereas you will spend the rest of your lives as hunted men, your century known to and hated by every man of my tribe. Each of you will spend a lifetime looking over his shoulder, waiting for the revenge of the Batavi to find you and leave you bleeding to death in the darkness, never to see your loved ones again. And you will be hated by your own no less than by the Batavi, because whenever your two cohorts and my tribe’s eight cohorts camp together, you can be assured that my people will seek you out with only one thought, to avenge the wrong that you are about to do. And remember, brothers, that while the Romans conduct their murders in a civilised manner for the most part, with a man being allowed the chance to deny the charge put before him unless of course, like my brother, he is still peregrinus and therefore, like most of us here, not allowed such a luxury, the revenge of the Batavi will be taken with naked steel, and in dark places. How many of you will die in such a manner, and how many who were not here today, until your own brothers spit on you and disown you for the misery you have heaped upon them?’
The same man in the second rank shook his head in disbelief.
‘That’s balls! How will they know it was us?’
Kivilaz grinned, knowing that his argument was gaining ground from the looks of uncertainty on the soldiers’ faces.
‘How will they know?’ He shook his head in apparent sadness. ‘Gods below us, but there’s the voice of a simple man! They will know, brother, because you are the only soldiers to have marched north from the Old Camp today. I asked the gate guards as we were leaving the fortress, and they told me, with a smirk and knowing wink to each other, that there were no other units on the road north other than a century of what they called Tungrians. So the only suspects will be the Tungri, and the matter of bribery will be quietly forgotten so that my death can be presented as a tribal matter, rather than the infamy it really is. It seems the men who really rule the Old Camp have made sure that there are no witnesses to this act of fratricide by cancelling the usual patrols, which means that they’ll have disrupted their predictable routine and drawn the attention of every man in the Old Camp to your role in their design. The word will already have gone round that you’re to do the deed that their very own emperor has forbidden his centurions, and put the prince of the Batavi in the dirt. Which means that by this time next week every man in my tribe’s lands, and yours, will know that you …’ he pointed at the man who had been so scornful a moment before, ‘that you took part in the murder of a man whom Roman justice could not convict, and chose to betray your brothers-in-arms for the sake of … well, I wonder what? What have you promised these men, Centurion, that was enough to make them accept a lifetime of fear? It must have been something enticing! A gold coin apiece? A handful of silvers? Or was it just a few beers and your eternal favour? Whatever it was, I doubt it’ll be enough.’
He met the officer’s hard stare.
‘Best you get it done, I’d say, and get on with the rest of your short, interesting lives.’
The other man nodded, putting the hand back on the hilt of his gladius and tensing to draw the blade.
‘Wait!’
The officer turned, scanning the ranks behind him with fury, and for a moment his neck was lethally exposed to a swift dagger thrust. Kivilaz looked at it for a moment and then raised his hand from the handle of his pugio.
‘I couldn’t live with myself, if I were to strike a man whose guard was down.’
The centurion turned back to him, drawing the sword with a swift rasp of iron and raising the weapon’s point towards Kivilaz’s throat, the muscles of his arm tensing, and Kivilaz nodded his readiness for the death stroke. Beside him Draco’s fingers tightened on the handle of his staff, but before he could act the Tungrian officer’s eyes jerked wide open and he staggered forward a pace, almost falling. Turning his head slowly, he looked down at the handle of the foot-long dagger blade protruding from his right side, where the leather shirt to which his scale armour was attached was bound together with leather thongs that allowed him to remove it, leaving a gap in the protection it afforded him. Lifting his gaze he stared, aghast, at the man whose pugio had been thrust through the opening, as he wrenched the weapon free in a gush of blood.
‘You … fucking …’
He pitched forward, his last conscious act an attempt to put the gladius into his intended victim, but Kivilaz had already stepped inside the sword’s reach and caught him as he fell, lowering the dying man to the road’s cobbled surface with a tenderness which belied the murderous intent that had confronted him only a moment before. Looking up at the line of soldiers before him he shook his head with what appeared to be genuine sympathy as the soldier with the bloodied dagger in his hand looked down pitilessly at his centurion. Rising to his full height Kivilaz nodded slowly, turning a slow circle to look at the soldiers gathered around him before speaking.
‘A hard choice, and one you should not have had to make. Part of me is grateful that you chose to avoid the perpetual civil war between our peoples that would have resulted, had he followed through with his threat … and part of me mourns that a member of our brotherhood would choose to ally himself with men so hostile to our tribes. But I tell you this …’ He pulled out his own dagger and drew the blade across his palm, opening a shallow but bloody cut. He then put the hand to the dying centurion’s side and raised it to show them all, red with the stricken officer’s blood while the centurion stared up at him with eyes almost sightless, his mouth opening and closed with the effort of breathing. ‘I make this man my brother in blood. Another victim of Rome’s duplicity! Another brother taken from me by their centurions’ incessant efforts to see me dead! And I swear vengeance on those men, for my brother Paulus, and for this my new brother, in front of you all! The day will come when we will have our chance to exact that revenge on them, repayment for driving us to this, and when that day comes I will call upon the Tungri to exact that revenge alongside the Batavi! He will be avenged!’
They stared at him in silence, some still doubtless pondering the gold in the dying man’s purse, and he pressed the bloody hand onto the front of his tunic to leave a splayed, bloody print.
‘This is my promise to you! On the day that our vengeance on this cabal of murderers is at hand, I will appear to you once more, and I will be wearing this garment as a mark of this moment, to remind us all of the desperate things their malign influence has driven us to carry out. He will be avenged!’
This time they cheered, not all of them, but enough for the moment of danger to
pass, and, pulling the sword from the centurion’s scabbard with the bloodied hand, he raised it to point at the sky.
‘I swear it! In the name of Hercules Magusanus, he will be avenged!’
This time the cheer was louder, as the thought of vengeance gathered weight, and he bellowed a fresh challenge at them.
‘Who will avenge him? The Batavi and the Tungri! We will avenge him!’
Another, even louder cheer.
‘Who will avenge him?’
They bellowed the response, fists clenched with anger.
‘We will avenge him!’
‘Who will avenge him!?’
‘WE WILL AVENGE HIM!’
Hramn moved to stand beside him, looking round the circle of cheering soldiers with a look that combined relief and disbelief.
‘If you fell into a lake of shit, I swear you’d climb out of it smelling of myrrh.’
Kivilaz looked at him levelly, sober despite the intoxicating energy of the moment.
‘It’s been said before, Decurion. And it’s all a question of giving the men you’re trying to convince what it is they want the most. Which in this case is a release from the guilt of killing their officer to save their own skins. It seems like a fair trade.’
He lifted the sword again.
‘Who will avenge him!?’
6
Betrayal: The Centurions I Page 19
