The centurion nodded, smiling beatifically at the men around the table.
‘Good. Now I’ll be around and about, mixing with the boys, having a cup of the overpriced piss that seems to be all that’s left in town and generally making sure that none of my lads get themselves into any trouble. Which, given that those hysterical women from the Fourteenth are billeted on this desperate shithole, and still bitter that their side lost the war without most of them getting the chance to air their iron, might be harder than usual. So do yourselves a favour, spare me the arseache of having to have you all flogged tomorrow and just this once don’t go starting any fights, right?’
The men around the table all nodded respectfully and voiced their wholehearted agreement, and after a moment more to make sure that Wigbrand had subsided back into his usual state of introspection, the officer gave them all one last hard stare and departed in search of more enlightened company.
‘Scar’s somewhere in town this afternoon, and he promised me a whole amphora of wine after the battle, for snuffing out the marines’ counter-attack. And that’s one debt I fully intend to collect.’
After a few moments desultory conversation Grimmaz stood, palming the coins that each man had placed on the table as his share of the pot. Striding up to the bar he eyeballed the man standing behind it confidently.
‘We’re moving on. Seven wines and a plate of bread. Four?’
‘Ten.’
The soldier goggled in genuine amazement.
‘How much? You robbing fucker!’
Clearly accustomed to having his prices challenged in such robust terms the tavern keeper betrayed only the smallest hint of irritation as he waved the Batavi soldier’s protest away.
‘The price is the price, soldier! If you want to eat my bread and drink my wine then you have to pay, same as everyone else! I have to pay more for the bread, and more for the wine, thanks to you lot doubling demand for even the poorest quality, which is pretty much all I can find on the market these days. So if you don’t like my prices then go and find someone who’ll sell to you cheaper, eh?’
He grunted abruptly as the soldier in question reached over the counter and dragged him across the counter by his tunic, punching him in the face and then dropping him gasping to the tavern’s floor.
‘You think I risked my fucking life to free you from tyranny so that you could ponce off me and my mates? I was putting better men than you to the sword while you were sat here sipping at your wine with a barmaid sucking your cock, and now you tell me to go and drink somewhere else, like I’m not good enough for your precious tavern? Well here’s the news mate, your shit smells just like mine, and I ain’t going to put up with you trying to have me over!’
‘No! I was only trying to say—’
A boot in the ribs silenced the stricken innkeeper’s protests, and the leading man’s tent mates got to their feet, looking around the remaining clientele with the expressions of men hoping for a reason to unload their frustrations in a similar manner.
‘Oi! Leave him alone!’ A newcomer stood in the tavern’s doorway, more men dressed in identical white tunics close behind him. ‘I’m billeted here, so that’s my man you’re abusing. Pack it up and piss right off, unless you want to be dealing with the Fighting Fourteenth!’
To his obvious disgust the men gathered around the tavern owner turned to face him with barely restrained mirth, Grimmaz stepping forward with a look of derision on his face.
‘Fighting Fourteenth? You can’t mean the same Fourteenth Legion that minced around Britannia behind our cohorts, always sending us in first to make sure the enemy were nicely softened up before you came to give them a good kicking once they were on the floor?’
The legionary’s eyes narrowed.
‘Step outside and repeat that, and then we’ll see where it gets you!’
‘Right!’
Grimmaz strode purposefully towards the legion man, who stepped back into the street and looked to either side of him in a way that sounded an alarm in Egilhard’s mind.
‘This feels wrong.’
Grimmaz stepped up to the waiting legionary, so close that he was nose to nose with the other man, snarling the insult that he’d been challenged to repeat.
‘What I said, you ponce, was that you pricks in the Fourteenth were always more than happy to hide behind the Batavi when the going got rough! And then always first to the front of the line when the hard work was done! You—’
He fell silent as he realised that half the men in the street were looking at him with expressions that boded poorly for his immediate future. Lanzo stepped through the door behind him with the rest of the tent party behind him, raising his left hand in apology.
‘He’s had a few, that’s all! We’ll take him away and you lads can all get back to your drinks!’
‘No you fucking don’t!’ The soldier who had invited Grimmaz outside shook his head pugnaciously. ‘This prick just pissed all over my legion’s fucking pride, and he can suck it all back up if he wants to walk away!’
Lanzo shrugged good-naturedly, his smile untouched by the legionary’s apparent unwillingness to let the matter go.
‘In point of fact friend, nothing he said was all that inaccurate. We were always first into action when we marched with the Fourteenth, and that’s the truth. There was a time when you boys loved us for that, but then you’re probably too young to have seen the fighting in Britannia. So come on, for old times’ sake, just let me take him for a drink somewhere a bit less heaving with you lads, eh, where he can’t upset anyone? There’s no need for anyone to get hurt, not so soon after fighting such a fucking horrible battle.’
He realised, the moment the words were out of his mouth, that he’d said the wrong thing. The soldier turned away, raising his arms to gesture to his comrades.
‘Now they’re having a fucking go because we didn’t make it to Cremona in time! Are we going to have to listen to this shit for the rest of our fucking lives? I say we give them a good f—’
Turning back to the Batavi soldiers, he realised too late that the hand that Lanzo hadn’t raised had contained a hidden threat, as the auxiliary revealed a brass-clad fist and swung a swift punch into the side of his head, dropping him senseless to the cobbles while the tent party stepped up alongside him, ready to fight. Andronicus looked up and down the silent street, knowing that an explosion of violence was almost inevitable, raising his voice to shout a warning he hoped would be audible across half the city.
‘We only came out for a quiet drink! This doesn’t have to end bloody, but if it does you know what we’re capable of!’
A hulking bruiser broke the spell that Lanzo’s swift disposal of the legionary had cast over them, bellowing at his fellow soldiers in a slurred voice that betrayed a long afternoon of drinking.
‘He fuckin’ decked Rufus! Ged ’em!’
Grimmaz nodded to himself, lowered his head and raised his fists, having retrieved a set of brass knuckles from his purse, barking a command at his men.
‘Ready!’
The tent party took their places behind him with the speed of men whose afternoon had hardly begun, giving them a distinct advantage over the legionaries who were, for the most part, significantly more inebriated than them. As the last man stepped into place they snapped out a roared response to Grimmaz’s challenge that raised hairs on the necks of every man within earshot.
‘READY!’
The big man frowned at the Batavi as they moved quickly into a wedge-shaped formation on either side of their leader and Wigbrand bringing up the rear with the look of a man with a lot of frustration to unload on the unwary, a heavy wooden chair leg held in each hand.
‘What the f—’
‘Go!’
Stepping forward swiftly in perfect unison, they advanced into the street with a single purpose, Grimmaz at the point of their spearhead, closing with the big legionary whose alcohol intake had clearly sadly affected his cognitive abilities. Raising a hand to poin
t incredulously at the auxiliaries, he went down spitting blood and teeth as the hard-faced soldier took him out with a single punch, bellowing the tribe’s call to action for his comrades to echo an instant later.
‘Batavi!’
‘BATAVI!’
From either side the call was taken up, men scattered along the street’s length tossing aside their wine cups and reaching into purses for the weaponry that they habitually carried when they walked out alongside any legion. In a moment the scene was transformed from uneasy truce to whirling melee, the single-minded auxiliaries snapping into action with vicious speed and purpose, grouping together to take on whoever was to hand. Grimmaz looked to his left, away from the route back to the gate through which they had entered the city, seeing a beleaguered knot of their fellows struggling against twice their number of legionaries.
‘Second Century! Follow me!’
Pummelling any man that got in their way, hitting and moving before the legionaries between them and their comrades could mount an effective defence, the tent party battered their way through to their embattled brothers, who fell gratefully into their ranks, bloodied and bruised, as Grimmaz’s men hammered their opponents into the gutter with brutal efficiency, Wigbrand laying into the hapless legion men two-handed and felling one after another with swift strokes of his improvised wooden clubs. Grimmaz stood panting next to Lanzo, his face twisted in a savage grin despite the blood trickling down his tunic from a split lip.
‘Fucking great … all we have to do now … is get all the way back … to the gate.’
His comrade nodded sombrely, seeing legion reinforcements flooding into the street from the bars and taverns.
‘This is turning into a goat fuck! We’ll be lucky to get out of this shithole without getting our legs broken!’
The two men looked at each other for a moment and then simultaneously started laughing.
‘What’s so funny? We’re going to get our arses handed to us!’
Lanzo looked down his nose at Egilhard, shaking his head.
‘If you can’t take a joke, you shouldn’t have joined!’ He sucked in a long breath, blowing the air out and rotating his head on a neck rippling with muscle. ‘Come on then you bastards, let’s show these cunts the honour of the Batavi!’
‘Not so fucking fast!’
Lanzo snapped to attention.
‘Centurion!’
Alcaeus stood before them, tunic immaculate and a cup of wine still held in one hand.
‘What the fuck is going on?’
‘We were challenged, Centurion, and you’ve always told us that a single step backwards—’
‘—is a defeat? Yes, I did.’ The officer shook his head in disbelief. ‘So this is all my fault, is it?’
Grimmaz grinned, recognising the man’s urge to fight.
‘We’ll cover for you, Centurion, you being a holy man and all. You just go back into that tav—’
Alcaeus drained his cup and tossed it into the gutter, pulling the vine stick from his belt.
‘Like fuck. Let’s show the Fourteenth how real men fight, shall we? Hercules and the Batavi!’
Castra Augusta Taurinorum, May AD 69
‘Call Prefect Scar!’
The Praetorian centurion waiting beside Scar nodded and gestured to the door in front of them, which had swung open a moment before to allow the Fourteenth Gemina’s legatus to leave the audience chamber. Pale-faced with evident fury, his glance across at the waiting Batavi officer had been poisonous, and even the guard officer had muttered a comment to the effect that it was a good thing a decent-sized party of Scar’s biggest and nastiest men were waiting to escort him back to their barracks. Rules and seniority were one thing, but a dagger’s blade tended not to have too many scruples as to whose blood it spilled. Marching forward into the audience chamber, he strode to the point where another of the praetorians recently enrolled from the victorious Vitellian legions was waiting with his vine stick pointing meaningfully at a point on the tiled floor, his other hand just as significantly resting on the handle of his dagger. Stamping to attention half a dozen paces from the throne on which Vitellius himself was waiting for him, the emperor tight lipped and evidently angry, he thrust a hand out in a salute so vigorous that the waiting guard officer visibly flinched, bellowing a greeting that made even the emperor blink.
‘Hail Caesar!’
Waiting at attention, he fixed his gaze on a spot just above the emperor’s head and allowed himself to relax into the momentary fantasy that he was a recruit again, avoiding eye contact with his new centurion for fear that the officer would wield his vine stick in anger at any implied insubordination. In reality he was the officer whose men were allegedly responsible for a fortress-wide altercation requiring the violent intervention of two full cohorts of praetorians to stop fighting that had threatened to result in mass casualties. An officer standing in front of a man who could, with a single word, end either his military career or his life.
‘Prefect.’
Vitellius looked down at the scroll in his lap and Scar pounced, determined not to show any hint of weakness to the disapproving chorus of Roman officers gathered behind their ruler.
‘Tiberius Julius Germanicus, Caesar!’
The emperor’s gaze flicked back up to the scarred face of the man standing before him, but if he was looking for any hint of disrespect he was disappointed. Twenty-two years of soldiering had blessed Scar with the ability to wear a mask of such bland attentiveness, initially to avoid the ire of those above him and latterly to avoid betraying his disappointment with the vast majority of the men that Rome put in command of its armies, while silently working out how to work within their plans to the best effect and fewest casualties.
‘There’s no need to shout, Prefect, I can hear you perfectly well.’
‘Thank you, Caesar!’
The older man stared at him for a moment longer, taking in the Batavi’s lean figure and cruel, disfigured face, evidence of a life spent marching and fighting for Rome across the length and breadth of occupied Britannia, enduring months and even years of boredom interspersed by moments of sheer exhilaration when the men who held the Batavi’s collar had unleashed the empire’s favourite attack dogs. Nobody understood better than Vitellius the frequent necessity for the Janus headed coin of Roman diplomacy to spin and come down on its subtly weighted obverse, the application of swift and deadly force wielded by men regarded as little better than trained animals.
‘So, Prefect Tiberius Julius Germanicus. Your tribal name is Scar, I believe. An interesting name. Did your father bless you with it, or have you earned it since joining our auxiliary forces?’
‘Both are true, Caesar.’
Vitellius nodded, turning his attention back to the scroll.
‘This altercation yesterday, Prefect. The details read poorly, from where I sit. Thirty-five legionaries hospitalised along with twenty-two of your own men. And even in the corridors of the fortress infirmary, with medicae working to mend broken limbs and heal stab wounds, my praetorian prefect has found it necessary to post his men to maintain the peace between your own casualties and those of the Fourteenth Gemina. Why do you think that is, Prefect?’
Scar hesitated for a moment, considering his response, and the emperor did some pouncing of his own, perhaps looking to restore balance to their conversation, perhaps simply from irritation at having to waste his time considering hostilities between a loyal tribal ally and a legion that until recently would have cheerfully have separated his head from his shoulders. And possibly still would, given the chance.
‘Don’t bother trying to work out what I want to hear, Prefect, just tell me what’s on your mind … all of your minds. Tell me what it is that launches your Germans into a legion of defeated men like bolts from a ballista. And stand at ease, you’re making my guardsmen nervous.’ Scar relaxed his posture, shooting a swift glance at Varus who was standing at the emperor’s shoulder resplendent in the magnificence of a praetorian prefe
ct, and the emperor smiled at him without his eyes changing their gimlet-like regard of the man before him. ‘Praetorian Prefect Varus has already pointed out to me your men’s pivotal role at Cremona, and your own personal example of both discipline in holding firm to perform orders you found distasteful, and then undisguised martial prowess in defeating both the First Classica and the Praetorian cohorts in swift succession, so you can take it as read that I understand your value to my army. Just speak freely, man.’
Scar nodded.
‘As you command, Caesar. The Batavi … Batavian cohorts and the Fourteenth Legion have a long history, much of it happy. They were our parent legion, and we served faithfully alongside them for twenty-five years in Britannia. They were the disciplined face of Roman order, their use against a tribe the last resort when the talking was done and a swift and savage war inevitable, while we were their weapon of choice when there was an example to be made, a village to be burned out or a rebel warband to be hunted down. We were first into battle, and often all that was needed to bring an enemy tribe to its knees, and for a long time the Fourteenth enjoyed the glory that reflected upon them, the relationship between us almost a meeting of equals despite the differences in our status.’
‘Which rankled?’
‘No, Caesar. We do not aspire to live like legionaries, we are Batavi and happy to be who we are. The truth is that a gap opened between my men and those of the Fourteenth after the defeat of the rebel Boudicca, for which the previous emperor named the Fourteenth Martia Victrix for defeating an army of sixty thousand with only their own strength and their Batavi and Tungrian cohorts. We were allowed no share of this glory, given no badge of honour for routing the enemy before the legion moved to make the kill, and when the legion’s soldiers saw our unhappiness with this they started calling us barbarians and belittling our achievements. Rather than lauding us for our skills in battle they took to dismissing us as savages, while for our part it was a natural reaction to emphasise our own role as their shock troops, and compare it with their role as the weapon of last resort, which saw us do far more fighting than they were ever allowed. The relationship went sour, Caesar, for reasons I do not fully understand, and one thing led to another. When the legion was ordered to the east to take part in the planned invasion of Parthia it was a relief to my predecessor that we were not chosen to accompany them, he told me, given the state of hostility between us. And when the current sad state of affairs led us to this fortress, billeted alongside the Fourteenth, I went so far as to warn the praetorian prefect, a man I know to be both brave and honourable, of the risk that fighting would result.’
Betrayal: The Centurions I Page 28
