He walked away, making for the Batavian headquarters where he found the tent party and their former centurion face down on the table having salve rubbed into their weals. Alcaeus looked up at him as he entered the tent, winked and put his head back onto the table with a grunt of pain. Varus looked at his back and whistled softly, as he realised that the angry weals, some of them deep enough to have cut the skin, were all more or less parallel to each other, rather than crisscrossed to deliver deeper wounds where they intersected.
‘Neat work, Prefect. You and the other unfortunate men who drew the lots to deliver this punishment must have been practising for most of the day to get this sort of precision into their whip work.’
Scar turned to face him.
‘I told Vitellius I was going to have them flogged. I didn’t promise to wield the whips like butcher’s cleavers.’
Varus raised his hands.
‘You’ll get no criticism from me, Germanicus. I’ve spent the last half-hour telling that senatorial oaf that commands the Fourteenth what I’m going to do to him if his men cause any more trouble.’
‘What you’re going to do to him?’
The prefect smiled wryly.
‘Well, not so much what I’ll do to him as a certain emperor of my recent acquaintance. I have the man’s ear, and he’s proving to be somewhat receptive to my ideas, for the time being at least. I’ve persuaded him to send the Fourteenth back to Lindum, their previous fortress in Britannia before they were moved in support of Nero’s hare-brained idea to invade the east two years ago, so that should mollify their sense of injustice at not having made it to the party at Cremona in time to enjoy the fighting. No soldier can harbour very much of a feeling of resentment for very long towards the man who’s just decided to send him to see his woman and children.’
Scar nodded.
‘That’s decent of you. And it’ll allow us all to relax for a while without their constant wailing and rending of garments.’
‘Not for all that long, I’m afraid. I’ve also persuaded the emperor that you need to be away from here, back to your own land. He’s having orders written sending you back to Germania, the Winter Camp at Mogontiacum in the first instance. Hopefully that will put you close enough to your homeland that you can get some of your men away on leave.’
Scar looked at him for a moment before replying.
‘Thank you, Prefect. And trust me, that’s not something I had expected to be saying to a praetorian any time soon. Your generosity will be appreciated by my men, even if it does mean another four-hundred-mile march.’
Varus bowed slightly.
‘I’ll consider my debt to your men for putting me in such a good light with Vitellius paid. And as for my debt to your former centurion, perhaps this will go some way to clearing it from my account?’
He handed Scar a jar the size of a good-sized container of fish pickle, which the Batavi uncorked and sniffed carefully.
‘Is that … myrrh?’
‘Yes, and if you’ve never bought any then you’ll have no idea how ridiculously expensive it is. I could have got every man in his century …’ he waved a hand to the recumbent Alcaeus, ‘… blind drunk every day for a week for the sum of money that that little jar cost me.’ Varus smiled at the memory of his purchase. ‘The merchant would dearly have liked to have named a higher price, once he saw the weight of my purse. He started wailing that he was only selling at the price he’d agreed to because business was so poor, and that this was the best quality myrrh from the Arabian lands beyond Judea and Egypt, so I should expect you’ll find it efficacious for those weals. It’ll take the sting out them too, I expect. And if you apply it with a light touch, there ought to be enough for all of the centurion’s tent party too.’
Alcaeus looked up at him from his recumbent position.
‘My thanks, Prefect. Consider any debt between us to be paid, and myself in the position of debtor.’
Varus bowed.
‘I shall consider us to be equal once more, Centurion, and myself to have the better part of the bargain.’
‘Alas, those days are in my past, Prefect, I am now only a soldier.’
The Roman guffawed, giving Scar a hard stare that the Batavi returned with a look of complete innocence.
‘There any many things I can be accused of, gentlemen, and with some justification, but stupidity is not one of them. And now I must return to my duties. There are rumours abroad that the hotheads of the Fourteenth plan to mark their departure from Taurinorum by leaving a few mementos for the townspeople in the form of burning buildings, and I’d dearly like to catch them in the act and make a few examples, just to demonstrate to them that they really did lose the war.’
He nodded to Scar and was gone, leaving the prefect staring after him.
‘One decent Roman, and they make him the prefect of the fucking praetorians.’
Alcaeus looked up at him.
‘Was he right?’
‘About your demotion? Of course he was, you stupid wolf-headed bastard. You’re reinstated as of the moment you took the last of those lashes. Although if you’d taken it badly and started shouting the odds about the punishment I was perfectly ready to leave you a soldier for a few months, just to teach you some manners.’
His friend raised a jaundiced eyebrow.
‘I’m sorry to have been such a disappointment.’
‘Not to worry, I’ll keep myself happy by putting you in command of every night watch between here and the Winter Camp. You and the rest of these idiots. Now get your stripes dressed with the prefect’s perfume and fuck off to bed. I’ll need you bright-eyed in the morning to help me start planning the march north with the disappointingly small number of officers I can trust to think beyond the ends of their swords.’
Colonia Agrippina, Germania Inferior, June AD 69
‘Very well, if that’s all our other business complete?’
Legatus augusti Hordeonius Flaccus looked around at his officers, who to a man nodded their agreement and stood up to leave the legatus augusti’s palatial office. As the last of them trooped through the door his secretary came in, his face creased with uncertainty.
‘Legatus sir, there’s …’
Flaccus waited for him to complete the sentence, but for once the urbane freedman seemed lost for words.
‘Yes? Spit it out man.’
Drawing himself together, his former slave regained a little of his customary composure.
‘There is an officer waiting to see you, Legatus. A centurion …’
Flaccus frowned, looking down at his list of the day’s appointments which, as was the usual routine, had been waiting for him after he had breakfasted and taken a turn around the camp to clear his mind.
‘There are no further meetings in my calendar, so I fail to see …’
He fell silent as a powerfully built figure loomed in the doorway behind the secretary. The newcomer’s voice was gruff to the point of hoarseness, but the note of command was unmistakable.
‘I have no appointment, Legatus. I was ordered to report to you at my first opportunity.’
Flaccus’s curiosity overcame his initial concern at the big man’s unexpected appearance, and he nodded to his freedman.
‘You’d better come in and tell me your story then, hadn’t you, Centurion?’
He waited as the other man came into the room and stamped to attention in front of the broad, polished wooden desk behind which Flaccus sat to do most of his business.
‘Centurion Gaius Aquillius Proculus, Eighth Augustan legion, reporting for duty, sir!’
Flaccus looked up at him dumbfounded for a moment, then turned to his secretary.
‘Are you sure we’re not expecting a centurion to be posted to us from the Eighth Augustan?’
The freedman shook his head decisively.
‘No, Legatus. I checked the messages and orders file carefully when the centurion arrived, and there’s no sign of any formal notification.’
�
�Thank you. I think under the circumstances that will be all for now.’
The door closed again, and Flaccus looked up at the massive figure dominating his office with an uncertain expression.
‘We’re not expecting you. What was your name again?’
‘Aquillius, Legatus.’
‘Aquillius. I see. So, given we’re not expecting you, and given I haven’t asked for a centurion, might I ask …?’
‘Emperor’s orders, Legatus. I was ordered to report to you in person.’
‘The emperor. You do mean Vitellius?’ He looked up at the newcomer in bafflement, as the centurion nodded affirmatively. ‘Why on earth should Vitellius take the slightest interest in my command structure, never mind the sort of detailed consideration that would lead him to have you ordered to join my army? Unless …’
His face went pale as he considered one very good reason why a centurion of such size and obvious martial prowess might have been sent to him.
‘Has Vitellius ordered you to …’
Aquillius stared at him in bafflement.
‘Ordered me to do what, Legatus?’
Flaccus stared at him for a moment and then breathed out a shaky breath of relief.
‘You’re not a killer, then?’
The big man shook his head in bafflement.
‘A killer? I have killed men, Legatus, but I was given no orders regarding any killing to be done here.’
The legatus leaned back in his chair.
‘Forgive me, Centurion. There is an old tradition, recently revived, for men of the centurionate to be used as convenient and highly effective assassins when men such as myself are deemed to be an irritation in need of removal.’
Aquillius shook his head.
‘I was sent to you, legatus augusti, for reasons of loyalty.’
He fell silent, leaving Flaccus regarding him with bafflement.
‘Loyalty, Centurion?’
‘Loyalty, Legatus.’
Having restated what he saw as the simple facts the big man fell silent once more, and Flaccus shook his head in exasperation.
‘This discussion will be a lot shorter if you just tell me why you’re here, Centurion.’
Aquillius nodded.
‘I was First Spear of the Eighth Legion, Legatus. The Eighth’s legatus decided to throw in our lot with Otho, after the emperor Galba’s murder, but we failed to reach the battlefield in time to turn the battle, and then Otho killed himself.’
‘Leaving you without the emperor to whom you had sworn loyalty.’
‘Exactly, Legatus.’
‘But, and let me take a wild stab here, this loyalty you mention has resulted in you declining to swear allegiance to Vitellius?’
Aquillius nodded pugnaciously.
‘That is correct, Legatus.’
‘In the name of all the gods, why would you do anything so …’
Flaccus looked up at the man facing him, taking in his bearing, his glittering medal harness, his perfectly maintained weapons and armour and his chin, clearly recently shaved but already darkening with incipient stubble.
‘I see. You’re one of those rare men who considers his honour more important than his career. And so, having sworn to resist Vitellius, unlike most of your comrades, you refused to take the oath of loyalty to the new emperor as a point of principle. Is that right?’
The big man nodded, his face impassive.
‘Yes, Legatus.’
‘And it was pointed out to you that you couldn’t retain your position if you weren’t willing to swear the oath?’
‘At length, Legatus.’
‘At length. I can just imagine. And so Vitellius, not wishing to spark a mutiny in the Eighth Augustan, decided to have you sent away somewhere where you can do no harm. Somewhere so far from your legion that your influence will soon be forgotten. And so he sent you here. To me.’
‘Yes, Legatus.’
Flaccus got up and walked around the desk, looking the other man in the eye, as best he could given the six-inch height difference.
‘You know that I have little use for you? After all, none of my First Spears will accept you in their legions, given your refusal to swear loyalty to the man they put on the throne.’
Aquillius remained silent, and the older man laughed softly.
‘You know, and yet you don’t care. You are that rare and precious thing, Centurion, a man of principle in a world where every other man, myself included, is exercising morals so pliable that all the certainties we once depended on have been turned upside down. And I like that in a man. Given that you’ve been sent to me on the orders of a no less august man than the emperor himself, you will join my personal staff, and act as my bodyguard, my military advisor in matters of tactics, and will generally make yourself useful to me until the time comes that I can find something of greater value for you to do. How does that suit you?’
The big man nodded curtly.
‘It will be an honour to serve you, Legatus. I expect that the experience will stand me in good stead once I have a legion under my vine stick again.’
‘Ah.’ Flaccus smiled, turning back to his desk. ‘I see that I can add the crime of hopeless optimism to that of unconditional fealty to an oath sworn. The odds of you ever commanding fifty-nine other centurions again are probably so bad that even the most inveterate gambler in the camp would struggle to accept your coin.’
Aquillius shrugged.
‘It is a time of war, Legatus, and that war may not yet be complete, from the rumours I hear. In times of war men like me have a tendency to prosper from the misfortunes of others.’
‘If, that is, you don’t suffer a misfortune yourself.’
The big head shook in denial.
‘Mars will watch over me, Legatus, and reward my fealty to my oath as he sees fit. I will not fall to the swords of the enemy.’
Flaccus laughed.
‘Given that the only fighting that’s likely right now is a civil war, if another legatus augusti decides that his legions are strong enough to challenge the emperor, I’d be less worried about the enemy and more concerned with those wielded by our friends.’
The centurion shrugged.
‘A man cannot always choose his enemies, Legatus. And in the absence of that choice, he must spend his energy not on bemoaning his fate, but working out the best ways to defeat whatever enemy is put before him. Defeat accomplished by the swiftest and most terrible of methods he can imagine.’
Flaccus looked up at him for a moment.
‘And are you always this cheery, Centurion?’
The big man nodded without a hint of humour.
‘If you wish to see me happy, Legatus, show me your enemy and release me upon them. Until then, I will tolerate what I have to do simply in order to enjoy that moment. Sir.’
9
Oppidum Batavorum, July AD 69
‘No sign of anyone?’
The commander of the night watch, a former Bodyguard decurion whose men had been divided between the city’s four gates and told to sound the alarm at the first sign of any approach to Batavodurum, shook his head at Hramn, his helmet crest a slash of white in the dim light of the torches that lit the eastern gateway.
‘Nothing. If I wasn’t so happy just to be back in armour and doing something useful, I’d be telling you what a waste of time this is.’
After their narrow escape from death at the hands of the Tungrians, Hramn and Draco had decided that it would be sensible to have the city’s gates manned at all times, more to keep a watch for any Romans who might make an attempt on Kivilaz’s life than to mount any meaningful defence against an attack nobody seriously expected to happen. At the prince’s suggestion Hramn had also set his men to training the tribe’s militia how to fight like professionals, as a means of bolstering their relatively meagre numbers. It was the closest that the guardsmen were likely to get to soldiering for some time to come, they expected, and so they had thrown themselves into the task with their customary
efficiency, commencing the transformation of the militia from enthusiastic amateurs to something altogether harder. Hramn grinned happily back at his officer, tapping his own mail-clad chest.
‘I know. It feels right, doesn’t it, even if we’re armed to defend the city against our own allies. And even if they could roll over us without too much trouble, if they were minded to.’
‘Oh I’m not so sure about that. I suspect even a full cohort would find our boys an indigestible lump of gristle to chew on.’
Both men turned to find Kivilaz behind them, Hramn shaking his head at their tribune’s unexpected appearance.
‘One of these days you’re going to have to teach me how you do that.’
The older man grinned lopsidedly at them, his one good eye twinkling in the torchlight.
‘Just light on my feet, that’s all there is to it. That, and telling myself that I’m not there.’
Hramn shook his head again.
‘Whatever it is, don’t do it to trained soldiers after dark unless you want to find four feet of spear shaft sticking out of your back.’
Kivilaz laughed softly.
‘I’d be the man holding the spear, I think you’ll find, with its previous owner looking down his own iron.’
He looked about him.
‘All quiet then?’
‘As quiet as the grave itself. And just as well. I was wondering how well we could defend the city, if the Romans ever sent their legions at us, and I came to the conclusion that we’d probably only manage to hold them off for an hour or two.’
The older man shook his head, his good eye glinting with grim humour.
‘You’re overestimating our neighbours, Hramn. With most of the Fifth and a good portion of the Fifteenth gone south to fight Otho’s legions, they’ve been recruiting as hard as they can, which means that right now they’re knee-deep in new recruits who still can’t even beat a wooden training post in a duel yet. There’s not one of your men hasn’t wetted his blade with the blood of an enemy, so I’d say that if they came to confront us now our one cohort would give them a bloody nose they wouldn’t forget in a month of Saturnalia, and that’s before you consider the training you’ve given the militia and how much they’ve improved with their weapons lately. All they lack is iron armour to make them every bit as good as any legionary they might find themselves facing. And besides, the Romans won’t come anywhere near us. Their legatus won’t want to have to face Vitellius in the event that the actions of a couple of idiot centurions cause our eight cohorts to withdraw from his army, so I’d imagine that he’ll make sure his men keep their heads down from now on. And besides, I don’t think that we should be thinking so much about defence as—’
Betrayal: The Centurions I Page 30
