Betrayal: The Centurions I

by Riches, Anthony

He grinned, raising a questioning eyebrow and tapping his purse meaningfully.

  ‘But that’s just my theory. Perhaps my Wolf Priest has an opinion?’

  Varus dipped his head in a gesture of respect to Alcaeus, inviting him to join the discussion.

  ‘The gentleman who captured a full cohort of marines is more than entitled to express his views. Centurion Alcaeus?’

  Alcaeus had tried his best to remain a grey presence in the background from the moment that Varus had taken command, but his part in the previous month’s victory had soon enough been revealed to the Roman, and the fact that Scar usually kept him close to hand as a second opinion had unavoidably exposed him to the prefect’s curiosity. He stepped forward, looking across the battlefield at the marine’s ordered ranks and then turning to look at the men of the Twenty-First Legion.

  ‘Those marines will be desperate to recover their reputation from the disaster on the Po. They are well equipped, and they appear to be well led. Whereas our allies lack something vital to their success in such a fight.’

  Varus raised an eyebrow.

  ‘And what is it that they lack, Centurion?’

  Alcaeus stared at the stationary ranks of soldiers for a moment longer.

  ‘Their spirits are weak, Prefect.’

  ‘Their … spirits?’

  ‘They spent the march south terrorising the population, rather than preparing themselves for a fight to the death with men of conviction who clearly believe in their cause. There is no belief in them other than in their unassailable reputation as blood-soaked animals when battle is joined. What will they do when they come face-to-face with men who have no interest in their fame, and whose belief in their cause will make them equally stern in the iron storm?’

  Varus considered his reply for long enough that Scar saw his opportunity and seized it.

  ‘Would you care to venture a wager with me on the subject, Prefect? A gold aureus on the result of these two legions fighting it out?’

  Varus smiled back at him, relieved that his deputy seemed to have dealt with the disgruntlement that had so taken him aback.

  ‘Why not? Whoever’s chosen legion wins the first clash of arms takes the coin. Although I’d say you’re a brave man to wear your purse quite so brazenly on the battlefield.’

  Scar shrugged.

  ‘The man who can fight his way through my warriors and take it from my dead body will fully deserve the gold it contains.’

  The Twenty-First was in position now, its legionaries still chanting their battle hymn with an underpinning rap of spears shafts on shield rims, a rhythm to stir the blood and get a man’s neck hairs up as combat beckoned. With a blare of trumpets and shouted orders that rang out over the din, the legion lurched untidily into motion across the muddy farmland that separated them, advancing towards the waiting marines with evident purpose. Varus stared at them impatiently, clearly as frustrated with his cohorts’ inaction as was Scar.

  ‘Shall we go forward and watch at closer quarters, Prefect Germanicus?’

  Scar nodded, happy to oblige his commander’s evident eagerness for the fight, calling an order back to the decurion who led his century’s horsemen, the tribe’s best riders mounted on the finest horses that money could buy.

  ‘We’re going forward to watch the battle when these two legions meet, and you can come along with your squadron to make sure we’re not interrupted by any rude men! Giftaz!’ He pointed to the senior centurion of his second cohort. ‘Watch the river! If you see any gladiators getting ready to cross the river have your trumpeter sound three long notes to get my attention!’

  Cantering forward across the recently tilled farm land, easily overtaking the Rapax’s front rank as the soldiers laboured across the soft earth, they reined in their mounts a hundred paces from the point where Scar estimated the two legions would clash. He nodded grimly as the Classica’s marines readied their spears.

  ‘Whichever one of us takes the aureus I can guarantee you one thing, Prefect. This is going to be bloody.’

  As the oncoming ranks of legionaries advanced inside throwing range, a horn blew, loud enough to be heard over the cheers and shouted imprecations of the advancing Vitellians, and as one man the Classica’s front line took a step forward and launched their spears at the oncoming soldiers, following up with another volley before drawing their swords and setting themselves to receive the oncoming legionaries’ charge. Varus laughed out loud, grinning with delight.

  ‘Hah! All they’ve done is get the men of the Twenty-First really angry! You’re right Germanicus, this is indeed going to be bloody!’

  Scar pursed his lips and kept his opinion to himself, counting the dozens of legionaries who were left inert on the trampled, bloody soil or struggling in agony to pull loose the barbed spear heads that were buried in their bodies, while their comrades stormed into the attack. With a collective bellow the attackers hurled their own spears into the waiting line of marines, to less effect, then closed the gap between them at the trot, eager to be at their enemies with sword and shield. The two lines met, men on both sides punching with their shields and stabbing at whatever targets presented themselves as the Classica’s centre gave ground slowly, pressed backwards by the weight of their opponents’ attack but in such good order that to Scar’s eyes it looked more like a carefully controlled retreat than the result of their being out-muscled or out-fought.

  ‘Look, see! The usurper’s men are falling back! That aureus is mine already!’

  Scar shook his head without taking his eyes off the fight.

  ‘Only in the middle of their line, Prefect. I think I see their plan even if the Twenty-First’s legatus can’t.’

  The Rapax’s central cohorts pressed forward into the space that was opening up before them, hundreds of legionaries pouring forward with the legion’s eagle close to the spearhead of their thrust as the leading cohorts drove savagely into the heart of the enemy’s formation in an obvious effort to end the fight quickly by breaking the Classica’s will to fight, and perhaps even to capture the enemy’s standard and inflict the ultimate shame upon the inexperienced newcomers.

  ‘Gods below, the glory of it! They’ll cut their way through to the marines’ aquilifer, tear the standard from his dead hands and show them what a real legion …’

  Varus fell silent as another horn call rang out and the blue-clad soldiers who had been pulled out of the legion’s centre, and who waited in cohort strength on either side of Rapax’s fifty-pace incursion into their line, responded with a sudden driving counter-attack that rocked the legionaries facing them back on their heels. Feet pumping as they drove forward, they were seemingly intent on pushing back both of the Twenty-First legion’s wings, fighting with a sudden shocking ferocity that dropped dozens of men on both sides into the churned, bloody mud but which, increasingly apparently, was driving both flanks of the Twenty-First Legion back from their central cohorts. Scar shook his head in evident admiration.

  ‘The cheeky bastards are going for an encirclement! Their legatus must have deliberately weakened his centre to reinforce the wings in readiness.’

  Varus shook his head in bafflement.

  ‘But surely they can’t …?’

  It seemed that the Twenty-First legion’s officers shared his bemusement, for as the marine cohorts to right and left forced back the men facing them, leaving the Rapax’s leading units dangerously exposed to the risk of being separated from the main body of their legion, encircled and killed like penned-up beasts, no orders were being issued that might extricate them from the rapidly closing trap. Scar rose up in his saddle, bellowing at men too distant for his voice to stand any chance of being heard.

  ‘You’re being encircled! Pull back!’

  They watched, as the flanking cohorts that had been pulled from the Classica’s centre drove into either side of the Rapax’s most advanced cohorts, every moment of indecision on the part of the Twenty-First’s legatus deepening the trouble into which their headlong advance
had taken them. A flurry of horn signals from behind the legion’s line indicated that the men in command of the embattled Rapax had realised their predicament, but to Scar’s practised eye it was already too late to stave off the disaster that was unfolding. He turned in his saddle and stared pointedly across the river to their right, still devoid of any sign of an attack across its channel.

  ‘Just about now would have been a good time for eight cohorts of battle-hardened soldiers to have taken the enemy in their flank, don’t you think?’

  Varus didn’t answer, his mouth hanging open in amazement, and when Scar turned back and craned his neck to look into the heart of the fight, he realised with a shock what it was that had so astounded the man.

  ‘Gods …’

  The Rapax’s leading centuries were now surrounded in a sea of blue-tunicked soldiers, completely cut off from their comrades and under ferocious attack from all sides. Even as the two men watched in increasing disbelief, the legion’s eagle, a golden flicker adrift in a sea of iron, lurched and sank into the melee, rising again a moment later to be shaken in triumph as the men of the Classica who had pulled it from the lifeless fingers of its bearer carried it away from the fight in triumph.

  ‘We have to act!’

  Varus shook his head grimly.

  ‘I have my orders. To ignore them will make me little better than a traitor.’

  The Twenty-First legion was rallying, centurions bellowing orders as the cohorts that had been beaten away from the pitiful remnant of their isolated spearhead reformed their ranks and set themselves to attack again. Storming forward with the fury of men who faced the most ignominious disgrace imaginable unless they could redeem themselves by recapturing their lost eagle, they ripped into the Classica’s line with a savagery Scar had rarely seen on the field of battle, men throwing their lives away for the chance to kill an enemy or simply to open a gap for their comrades to exploit, hurling themselves onto the marines’ shields and pulling them down to open the men behind them to attack by the legionaries behind them. Still giddy with their victory, their foes were taken aback by the fresh onslaught, recoiling from the unexpected horror of facing an adversary whose collective sanity seemed to have absented itself in favour of a blood rage. Men who had moments before been reeling in defeat were transformed into raving beasts, crowding forward for the opportunity to take their revenge, and in the process driving those in front of them against the Classica’s line in such numbers that the marines were unable to hold them. Killing and being killed in their turn by the men before them, themselves magnificently disciplined in refusing to panic in the face of such bestial rage, the Rapax’s incensed soldiery tore great gaps in the enemy line and drove century-sized wedges into each one, hacking their way deep into the marines’ formation and reaping a bloody harvest of the defenders without regard to their own losses. Varus pumped a fist in the air, shouting for the joy of what he was seeing.

  ‘Look, they’ve taken the eagle back!’

  Alcaeus cast an experienced eye over the group of soldiers carrying away a standard taken in the fight, the proud symbol of a cohort’s pride, its silver finish black with the blood of uncounted men who had died in its defence and capture.

  ‘That’s not an eagle, Prefect. They won’t take that back without tearing that entire legion to shreds in order to get to it.’

  More standards were being passed back, but in none of these captures did there seem to be any recompense for the attackers, simply a grim pride in taking some small revenge upon the Othonians. Even as the badges of the Classica’s pride were being torn from dead men’s hands, the marines were falling back under the command of their officers, reforming their shattered line and leaving the Rapax’s exhausted legionaries to vent what remained of their fury on the dead and dying men who had fallen in their brief, incandescent assault, the rage that had fuelled their insane headlong charge burning out as they realised that the bloody fight was doomed to failure. The two sides drew apart, every man exhausted from the carnage that they had visited upon each other, leaving behind them a blood-soaked wasteland of deeply churned mud carpeted with the corpses and wounded of both sides. Some raised their arms to the heavens in supplication, others were still fighting and killing each other with whatever weapons were to hand despite being maimed or close to death, while those still standing leaned exhaustedly on their shields and eyed each other warily, lacking the energy in their legs to engage in further combat. Scar’s practised eye swiftly found the weak point in the Othonian line that the Classica’s retreat had created, and he raised his vine stick to point at the formations now clashing in the battle’s centre, praetorian guard cohorts on the usurper’s side of the fight under sustained assault by the famed six-foot-tall soldiers of the First Italica, both sides striving to their utmost to win the melee that would without doubt decide the battle, tearing into each other with swords and axes in a half-mile-long ribbon of gore-slathered slaughter that formed the battlefield’s point of decision. Nudging Varus he pointed to the praetorians’ open flank, left open and exposed by the marines’ retreat to their left.

  ‘There. The greatest opportunity any general can ever see laid out before him, an open flank. With even half our strength we could end this battle in less than half an hour. Do you still believe, Prefect, with the marines pushed back a hundred paces and in no condition to resist our advance, and with the Praetorians ripe for the taking, that it makes sense for your command to be sat here watching the river for—’

  ‘Scar!’

  He turned to follow the decurion’s pointing hand, his face splitting in a savage grin as he realised what it was that the man was trying to tell him.

  ‘At last!’

  ‘Fuck me but there’s enough of them! I had no idea there were so many gladiators in Rome!’

  Grimmaz stared at the men on the far bank with a look of evident disdain as they laboured to bring their assorted vessels to the water’s edge, the Po’s far bank suddenly crawling with armoured figures who had made their way through the vines that carpeted the land south of the river unseen, until the moment that the head of their column had emerged at the water’s edge. Equipped like legionaries in their armour and weapons, they were nevertheless displaying little of the organisation that was evident in every action trained soldiers took, their activity a hectic tangle of bodies rather than the ordered work of centuries and tent parties led and cajoled by centurions and their officers.

  ‘Just look at them. They’ve got all the discipline of a party of brothel bouncers.’

  He stared at them for a moment longer, his lip curling in disgust.

  ‘We’re going to slaughter the bastards once they get themselves sorted out and try to cross this ditch.’

  ‘And when is it that a man is at the most risk of making a fool of himself, eh Happy?’

  The leading man answered without turning round, recognising the voice of the Second Century’s centurion as the man tapped him on the shoulder with his vine stick.

  ‘When he’s pissed on cheap wine, Centurion Alcaeus sir?’

  ‘When he gets overconfident, Leading Man Grimmaz. They might not be trained soldiers, but if we let them get ashore there’s every risk that they’ll prove themselves to be more than a little dangerous. Proficient with their weapons. Very good with them, in some cases. Capable of killing more than a few of us in their individual, showy ways even while we’re reaping them in our usual, efficient manner. Oh we’ll slaughter them alright, but we’ll lose men, lose limbs, lose fingers that I’d rather we didn’t lose. So we’re not going to let them ashore, Leading Man Grimmaz, we’re going to kill them in the river, quickly and without any fuss. Like the butchers we are. Aren’t we, Banon?’

  The watch officer nodded without taking his eyes off the enemy’s preparations, his voice as relaxed as if the officer had enquired as to the fit of his new boots.

  ‘We will do what is ordered and at every command we will be ready!’

  ‘Good answer.’

&nb
sp; Most of the tent party nodded at their centurion’s words, watching as the enemy force dragged an assortment of improvised rafts and small boats that they had clearly commandeered and dragged across the farmland to the river’s south, each small party manhandling its craft to the water’s edge and standing alongside it ready to board, awaiting the command to commence the crossing. Egilhard watched in silence as the opposite bank’s chaos gradually resolved itself, officers marching up and down the river’s thin beach behind their hastily trained men and checking that all was ready for the assault on the northern bank.

  Scar jumped from his horse in front of the Batavi line and started barking orders at the senior centurions of his eight cohorts.

  ‘Leave the horses tethered, this is going to be a fight on foot! The seventh and eighth cohorts will move to line the riverbank and then lie prone! Stay low so as not to show yourselves to those animals, I don’t want them to see our strength and decide not to cross or we’ll be stuck here all fucking afternoon! The remaining cohorts will wheel to face the break in the enemy line and prepare to attack! Do it!’

  Gesturing for Alcaeus to follow, he strode toward the river, pointing with his vine stick at a spot on the Po’s bank and leading his men towards it without once looking back at them, Varus at his side.

  ‘Seventh and eighth cohorts! Follow me!’

  The other six cohorts watched as their comrades of the allied tribes surged forward in his wake, a ragged line hurrying to catch up to the man who ruled their entire world as he advanced into danger, the least soldierly of them simply advancing in response to his order, the natural warriors driven by their unreasoning love for the man and the martial pride he gave them by his simple example, and the remainder somewhere between the two extremes. Scar squatted down at the point where the land sloped down to meet the river’s water, staring intently at the gladiators who were casting off from the southern bank and paddling furiously against the Po’s strong current, reaching out a hand and gesturing to his men to keep low.

  ‘Find your place and get down!’