The Old Camp, Germania Inferior, February AD 69
‘Gods below, Gaius, but even by the standards we’re got used to, this is a desperate crop of recruits.’
Marius’s comrade affected to take a long hard look at the untidy century-sized formations of men that were being chivvied onto the parade ground by half a dozen centurions who already looked like they were at their wits’ end keeping their charges in some semblance of a formation and moving in the right direction.
‘I’d like to say I’ve seen worse. I’d really like to be able to say that.’
The senior centurion nodded grimly, taking a deep breath.
‘Exactly. Decimus told me that he wanted at least two cohorts to replace the men he expects to lose in battle, and here we are with barely five hundred men where a thousand were the minimum he wanted.’
Gaius shrugged.
‘If you’d seen the local reaction when we marched into the tribal villages you’d be surprised we managed to get this many. The Ubii were having nothing to do with it for the most part and the Batavi just laughed at us, still pissed off at the way their men in the German Bodyguard were dismissed, and the other tribes weren’t much friendlier, not on either side of the river. What we have here is the arse end of what might have been available, men who were desperate, or starving, or just too stupid to know that this really isn’t a good time to be joining up. After all, what good is the promise of citizenship twenty years from now if you’re likely to be sent south to die in a place you’ve never even heard of, for a man you couldn’t give a shit for?’
‘So this is likely to be all we can find?’
‘Truthfully? Unless we stop looking for volunteers and start demanding conscripts, yes. So I’d better go and give them the welcoming speech before we take them for their first walk in the countryside. Shit followed by honey, right?’
Marius nodded solemnly.
‘Shit followed by honey.’
His deputy walked out in front of the newly equipped recruits, some of whom were still squaring their shoulders and trying to get used to the weight and awkward feeling of their new armour, hands grasping unfamiliar practice spears or touching the wooden swords tucked into their leather belts when they thought nobody was looking. Gaius stepped up alongside him, drawing breath and shouting over the buzz of conversation in German, his rough-edged roar cutting through their musings like a gladius through rotting meat.
‘Silence!’
The hubbub died away to almost nothing, but a man in the front row made the mistake of muttering an inaudible comment to his neighbour, flinching as he realised that his new senior centurion was upon him, wielding his vine stick with real vigour to deliver a stinging blow to the miscreant’s thigh.
‘I said SILENCE! And that means you, Goat Face!’ Spittle flew from his lips with the violence of his shout. ‘The next man to open his mouth without being invited to speak can provide an example for the rest of you cunts as to what this …’ he held out a hand to one of the other officers, who placed the handle of a short, thick leather whip onto his outstretched palm, ‘… feels like when it’s delivering half a dozen swift blows to a man’s bare back!’
He stared at the utterly silent ranks before him for a moment before speaking again.
‘Good! None of you is rash enough to test me, which spares me a few moments of my life I’ll never get back spent thrashing the hide off you, and spares one of you having your back opened up in six places! Because this nasty little fucker …’ he raised the whip, ‘… will leave you marked for the rest of your days! But this is reserved for men we think might still make the grade, and earn the right to be considered as soldiers! Whereas for those of you who manage to fuck up badly enough, there’s this …’ He handed the whip back to his brother officer and accepted another instrument of punishment in return, shaking out its three tails for the recruits to see clearly, each of the heavy leather thongs studded with pieces of bronze, flailing it through the air inches from the soldier he’d reprimanded a moment before. ‘This is the scourge, Goat Face, and this isn’t designed to give you a gentle warning, or to leave you with a little reminder of what happens when you make me or any of my centurions unhappy. This little beauty is designed to take the flesh off a man’s back, quickly, efficiently, but in no way quietly!’
He dangled the scourge in front of the hapless soldier for a moment, then walked along the front rank of recruits, holding it so that the men behind them would get a good look at it. The recruit he’d christened with a nickname that Marius suspected would stay with him for the rest of his military career looked close to either fainting or vomiting, his admittedly somewhat caprine features covered in sweat as he sucked in a long shaky breath, stiffening as Gaius walked back towards him.
‘This is what we use when one of you – and trust me there will be at least one of you – makes such a big mistake that we want nothing more to do with him! Because all of you, at some point in the next few weeks, and you especially Goat Face, now that I’m looking out for you, are going to wish you’d never joined! And while it’s too late to just walk away, because once my legion owns a man, even an ugly bastard like you, he stays owned for the rest of the twenty years he promised it, fucking up so badly that you get thrown out on your ear is going to look very, very good to you. Every last one of you is going to think about it, once we get to work on turning you from the dick-stroking ration thieves you are now into proper soldiers! So that…’ he pointed to the whip being held up by his colleague, ‘… is for those little mistakes we’d rather you didn’t make again! Three strokes for an accidental injury to one of your mates. Five strokes for getting caught with a woman in camp. Going over the wall for some unauthorised beer or cunt? That’s dangerously close to deserting – so that’s usually ten strokes for you and three apiece for your tent mates who, after all, allowed you to do it! We don’t get many of those, but there’s always someone stupid enough not to take me seriously when I say that we will lash you at the first opportunity, and we will double those penalties if you show the slightest sign of not simply taking your stripes and getting on with it! Or …’ he cracked a hard grin at the sweating soldier, ‘… if I simply take a dislike to you! And be warned, dislike is my usual starting point with you animals, since none of you have as yet done a single thing to make me view you as anything other than useless cunts not fit to wax my boots!
‘Whereas this …’ he raised the scourge again. ‘This, for those of you who will prove their determination to enjoy the experience at close quarters, is what we use when a man genuinely has no redeeming features, and no place in my legion! If I or any other of these officers charged with the thankless task of turning you into soldiers think you’re not worth persevering with, then there’s only one sentence! Thirty lashes with this little beauty, each blow stripping away the flesh from your back and ribs, and from your legs if I’m in the mood, until the blood runs down your legs like piss! I’ve seen men, the real hard cases, take a dozen with the whip and not make a sound! Grinning hard at the lashes, determined not to give us any sign of pain, not even a murmur! And I’ve seen the same men screaming and begging for mercy after their first two or three strokes with the scourge!’
He looked up and down the ranks before him, grinning again at the sudden solemnity that he saw on every man’s face.
‘Except there is no mercy! Because by the time you’re bent double over the whipping post, we’re not teaching you a lesson, or punishing you for the stupidity of a tent mate! No, when the scourge comes out all we’re doing is ruining you, making your back a mess of scars and sending you away with a permanent reminder of just how big a mistake you made in pissing off your centurion so badly that we decided to stop trying to make you fit to serve! At least one of you, I guarantee, is going to make that mistake, and when you do, this will be waiting!’
He swung the scourge through the air before him, watching the closest soldiers’ faces whiten at the thrumming note of the lashes.
�
��Oh, and desertion? That’s simple, in case you were wondering! The sentence for desertion is death, immediate and without any right of appeal!’
He handed the whips back to his fellow officer and turned to his superior with a crisp salute.
‘First Spear?’
‘Thank you, Centurion.’ Marius turned to face the sombre recruits. ‘On the positive side, if you keep your nose clean, learn to soldier quickly and without making a mess of it, then you’ll soon be members of a legion century entrusted with the defence of the empire’s borders, well paid, fed three times a day and with the promise of citizenship at the end of your service, and citizenship for your children too! If you want to get a leg up the ladder of life, you’ve come to the right place!’
Shit followed by honey, that was the usual order of the day with new recruits. Scare them half to death with a centurion who was clearly deranged, then show them the way to avoid his clutches by explaining in reasonable terms what they would have to do to become soldiers.
‘Over the next two months we’re going to take you, and change you! We’ll give you stamina, make you stronger, faster, train you with your weapons and teach you how to avoid getting wounded or killed by men with weapons just like them! You’ll learn to ignore the weather, how to carry your pack and shield, how to dig out a marching camp, and a hundred other things that you’ll need to know if you’re going to serve in our army! You will learn to march, first twenty miles in five hours, and then forty miles in twelve hours, and once you can do that we’ll go back to twenty miles a day but in your campaign kit, with a full pack and shield! You will practise every day twice a day with your wooden sword and shield which, as you may already have guessed, are a good deal heavier than the real thing! We give you wooden equipment for three reasons, firstly to avoid you killing each other in training, secondly because you will train in all weathers, in heavy rain or burning sun, and we don’t want your kit getting needlessly rusty, and thirdly because when you get your hands on the real thing it’ll feel so much lighter and easier to wield that you’ll be thanking us for making you use wood for so long! You will learn how to throw a spear, and how to defend yourself against a thrown spear. You will learn how to kill an enemy with your sword quickly and efficiently, and you will practise with that sword so often that the strokes will become second nature. We will make you nimble, able to leap onto a vaulting horse with your sword drawn without either falling off the other side or stabbing yourself to death, and happy to climb a siege ladder while unpleasant men throw rocks and spears at you. Last of all, and the most fun of all – for your instructors, that is – you will learn the various formations and manoeuvres that we use to attack and defend in battle, first here, on the parade ground and then later out in the country, going forward, going backwards, going sideways, and through all this you will only ever have one objective, if you know what’s good for you …’
He paused, smiling as the recruits leaned forward to hear his next words. Gaius handed him the whip, and he raised it above his head to reinforce the point.
‘Your only concern will be not to be the slowest man to carry out your instructor’s orders. Because the slowest man in the century will inevitably at some point become the man with the warmest back. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!’
He took his friend’s salute and gestured for him to carry on, smiling to himself as he walked away, as a fresh tirade of abuse was unleashed on the hapless recruits. Shit, followed by honey, followed by a mountain of fresh shit. Seeing Legatus Lupercus waiting for him he cursed under his breath, adjusting his path to approach his commander and stamping to attention as he saluted the Roman.
‘Legatus sir! The new recruits have commenced their training!’
‘So I see. I presume that the air will be filled with the sound of swearing and casual violence for the next few weeks?’
The question was asked with a smile, and not for the first time Marius found himself warming to the man.
‘Indeed it will, sir. They’re no use to us until they can be divided up among our cohorts, and for that to happen they must at least be half-trained.’
‘Indeed.’ Lupercus looked at the recruits, still being lambasted by Gaius, then shifted his gaze to search the remainder of the parade ground. ‘But surely that can’t be all of them, First Spear? They can barely muster a cohort …’
Marius nodded.
‘I’m afraid it is, Legatus. It seems that the local tribes have done much as we predicted, and held their young men back from joining up. It seems they fear that the remainder of the legions on the frontier will soon be dragged into the war against the pretender Otho.’
Lupercus nodded with his lips pursed.
‘And who, strictly between you and I, First Spear, is to say that they’re incorrect in that belief? The latest news from the south is that the legions on the Danube have declared for him, which means that our men marching over the Alps will find themselves opposed by not only the forces that he can muster from Italy but also several crack legions who will all too soon appear in their rear and threaten to cut off their line of retreat. Under those circumstances I would expect our new emperor to be away south with whatever force he can muster from Britannia, when the legion vexillations arrive from over the water, and whatever further men he believes it safe to remove from the garrisons along the river. And, worse than that, I’ve been warned by his army commander for Germania that we should be ready to host a visit in early March. Vitellius wishes to see the progress we’ve made in readying our new recruits for war.’
Marius stared at his superior in consternation.
‘Their readiness for war …?’ He shook his head, barely able to believe what he was hearing. ‘Legatus, they won’t be ready for war in March. They won’t even be ready to march a standard campaign distance with kit by then, never mind go to war.’
Lupercus nodded.
‘I know. After close to thirty years’ service to the empire I have a fairly shrewd idea of what it takes to produce a trained legionary who can be put into battle with some hope of success. But if our emperor decides that they’re ready, then they’ll just have to be ready, won’t they?’
He raised a questioning eyebrow at Marius, who nodded reluctantly, clapping a hand on the big man’s shoulder.
‘I know. You will do what is ordered and at every command you will be ready. Carry on, First Spear.’
Northern Italy, March AD 69
‘That water’s going to be colder than the Rhenus in February.’
Banon nodded sleepily at Alcaeus’s muttered opinion, watching the Po’s dark water streaming past the riverbank by which they were squatting in front of the Second Century through half-closed eyes. The river had been swollen by snowmelt from the high mountain valleys of the Alps over which they had advanced into Italy only days before, and the water’s fast-moving surface resembled a sheet of polished iron, such was the speed of its flow. The centurion looked across the river at the dark landscape beyond, straining his eyes for any sign that their enemy might be to hand, musing quietly on the task before them.
‘We’ll be awake by the time we reach the other side, and that’s a fact. Let’s hope that anyone keeping watch on the other side is still sleeping while we’re staggering up the far bank blue with the cold.’
Scar had issued his orders as the sun had been setting the previous evening, before sending the cohorts forward the last mile or so to the river’s northern bank.
‘Make your approaches to the river slow and quiet, with no shouting, cursing or loud farting to let anyone on the southern side know we’re coming. If there are men watching the river they’ll probably pull back to their camps overnight since it’s still cold enough to freeze a bull’s balls off once the sun’s down, but let’s not risk having their sentries getting curious as to what all the noise is. Each cohort has its own crossing point, which the scouts will lead you to, and when you reach the river get your men bedded down for the night and tell them to keep it quiet. I’ll be wa
ndering about and if I hear any of your men before I’m challenged there’ll be unhappiness.’
He looked around at his officers.
‘Our orders are for this to be a limited incursion into enemy territory. We get across, we cause as much damage as possible, and then we get back onto this side of the river. The aim is to put them off balance, get them wondering where we might pop up next, make them spread their forces out and open themselves up for attack. So once we’re on the other side I want the cohorts scouting forward in force. Any enemy soldiers you bump into are to be captured if possible and killed if not, but under no circumstances are they to be allowed to get away and raise the alarm. Small enemy formations, if we encounter any, are to be overrun with speed and aggression. Anything up to a cohort is fair game, given our strength, so blow your horns and pile in, knowing that the cohorts on either side of you will be on them like hunting dogs soon enough.’
‘What if we find a legion over there?’
The prefect had grinned hungrily at the question.
‘That all depends on the legion we meet, I’d say. You cohort commanders will earn your corn if that happens, because you’ll have to make a decision based on what you see. There are some legions on the other side which could be hard to handle – after all, our old friends of the “Fighting Fourteenth” are out there somewhere. If we run into them it could all get very warm very quickly.’
Alcaeus nudged the dozing Banon who, like many of the men of the Second Century, was sufficiently experienced to have fallen into a fitful sleep once the advance to the Po’s northern bank was complete, untroubled by either the quiet grumbling of those soldiers unable to sleep or the contented chewing and snorting of horses being kept quiet by oat-filled nose bags.
‘Did I tell you that Scar told us that if we find a legion on the far side we’ll make the decision whether to fight or run once we can see who it is we’re facing?’
Banon rubbed his face, momentarily groggy from the brief sleep.
Betrayal: The Centurions I Page 20
