Betrayal: The Centurions I

by Riches, Anthony

  He stared out of the office’s window for a moment, then tapped the table hard with his finger.

  ‘Simpler times, eh Marius? I’m sure you’ve happy memories of a time when there was nothing much to worry you. But that was then and this is now, and this is what we have to deal with. So I suggest you gather our centurions and get them ready for a conscription effort. We’ll have to hit all of the tribes at the same time, because once word gets out about this it’ll spread like a forest fire, and all the men we want to pluck from their homes will be away to hide in the woods for a while. And make sure that the Batavians are the first tribe we visit, because if they get so much as a hint of this we might find our reception somewhat warmer than we’d like.’

  Oppidum Batavorum, August AD 69

  ‘By the order of the Emperor, Aulus Vitellius Germanicus Augustus, High Priest and Father of the Fatherland!’

  The centurion paused and looked about him imperiously, as if he were pronouncing his own ascension to the godlike height of the Roman throne, drawing more than one amused titter from the Batavi civilians who had gathered dutifully around him to hear the proclamation he had for them. Momentarily nonplussed by their evident lack of respect he bridled, and in doing so lost track of where he was in the scroll that he had unrolled a moment before stepping up onto the small wooden platform that had been respectfully placed before him.

  ‘By the order of the emperor, it is decreed that the people of the tribe known to us as the Batavians will at this time provide men and whatever other support may be requested of them by the emperor’s appointed representatives, in order to allow the army of Germania to make their full and rightful contribution in the war to defeat the pretender Vespasianus!’

  ‘He did it then.’

  Kivilaz nodded brusquely at Hramn’s musing.

  ‘Of course he did it. Didn’t Plinius tell us he would? He’s a cornered rat, and we all know what cornered rats do. Now listen to what the man has to say for himself.’

  ‘You are hereby ordered …’ he paused to savour the word, looking around the gathered crowd with a look that oozed satisfaction, ‘to provide all men of an age to serve in the imperial Roman forces, promptly and without discussion. I will wait here for one hour.’ He raised an hourglass, and ostentatiously tipped it over to start the sand running. ‘And at the end of that hour I expect every man in this settlement between the ages of fifteen and forty to come forward and swear the military oath, promising to serve our emperor to the fullest extent of their abilities, and if need be to sacrifice their lives to his cause!’

  After a moment’s sullen silence, the people gathered around him did as they had been carefully instructed by Hramn and his men, who had gone from house to house over the previous few days telling their kinsmen what to expect, and how they should react. Dispersing in perfect silence, they emptied the town’s forum and left the centurion and his eight-man escort standing alone, slightly baffled by the lack of any reaction. Kivilaz turned to Hramn, nodding decisively.

  ‘Go on then. As we agreed it.’

  The decurion nodded, striding out into the open space and walking up to the centurion.

  ‘I’m Hramn, Decurion, former commander of the Imperial German Bodyguard and current commander of the Batavian Guard, imperial Roman army. Can I offer you some refreshment, Centurion, while you wait for the men of the tribe to consider your request?’

  The Roman looked down his nose for a moment, considering the man before him as if he were assessing the worth of a hunting dog.

  ‘The imperial decree is not a request. It is an order, from the emperor to this piss-pot little tribe of yours. You will surrender every man of military age, or—’

  Hramn raised a hand.

  ‘I’ll stop you there, Centurion. The Batavi enjoy a special relationship with Rome, one that we thought all Romans and their servants were aware of, but in the absence of your having been appropriately briefed, allow me to educate you. We serve Rome voluntarily, under a treaty agreed with Gaius Julius Caesar and ratified every emperor, with the guarantee from Rome of complete freedom from the usual taxes and conscriptions. We have eight whole cohorts of men serving under your banner—’

  ‘Not my problem.’ The officer stepped forward, putting his face so close to Hramn’s that the decurion could smell the fried onions that he’d eaten for breakfast. ‘Your problem. My orders are to take your men to serve in the Fifth Legion, and if you or anybody else tries to get in my way I’ll have you, or them, beaten, stripped and flogged. I’ll—’

  He looked over Draco’s shoulder as something at the forum’s edge caught his eye. A single man, dressed in the white tunic and heavy mail shirt of the renamed Batavi Guard had stepped into the open space, a long spear held upright in his right hand and an oval shield at his left side.

  ‘What the fuck?’

  He fell silent as another guardsman appeared from behind a building to his right, his head swivelling as a third Batavi stepped out of the concealment of a house to his left. Watching in continued silence, his eyes narrowed as more armed and armoured men revealed themselves, until there were enough to match his distinctly nervous-looking escort.

  ‘What you see here, Centurion, is a small number of men of the Batavi Guard. Each of them could take down three of these children standing behind you, even if they had the balls to stand and face us, which I doubt. And as for punishment, I’m happy to promise that just as long as you turn about and make your way out of the city, away to the east and out of our land, no harm will come to you or any of your men.’

  He drew breath to continue, but the officer nodded dourly.

  ‘I can see we’ve been misled. I was told that you people were obliged to provide more men if they were required, whereas it’s clear to me that you have a case. I’ll take my men and be on my way.’

  Hramn allowed himself a smile at the Roman’s sudden discomfiture.

  ‘I thought you might. Leave any time you like, Centur …’

  The word died on his lips as a boy of no more than twelve darted into the forum, eyes wide and lungs heaving for breath. The officer shot him a glance and turned on his heel, gesturing to his men.

  ‘Detachment, form up! Quick march!’

  He strode away with the look of a man who was likely to start running the moment he knew he was unobserved, slapping one of his men with the end of his vine stick more, it seemed, from a desire to encourage the same sense of urgency in his men than because of any lack of effort on their part. Hramn watched as the child, having staggered the last few dozen paces to Kivilaz, stood in front of the prince fighting for breath and gabbling out the message he had been sent to deliver. Having already guessed what it was, the veteran turned to Hramn with angry urgency.

  ‘The boy’s from the closest village, and he’s trying to tell me something about Romans. So I suggest you get your men saddled and send every century you have to the villages nearest to our border with Roman territory. That centurion had the look of a man who’d been caught out, and I’m willing to bet that his presence here was meant to distract us while other men like him drag our boys away to the Old Camp.’

  The decurion called for his officers and started barking orders.

  ‘Mount, take a village apiece and ride as hard as you can. If you find Romans trying to conscript our people you disarm them, at spear’s length if need be, and then you kick their arses and send them back to where they came from.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  The big man turned to Kivilaz with a tight smile.

  ‘If those fuckers have already done what they intended by the river then they could be halfway to our border with the empire with every man of military age in his village by now. So I’m going to ride out that way and see if I can flush out any game.’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’

  The prince had his horse saddled and mounted before Hramn’s century was assembled. They rode out of the city’s east gate at a canter, overtaking the recruiting party two mi
les later. Hramn reined his horse in alongside the trotting soldiers, shouting over the din of eighty sets of hoofs as his century passed.

  ‘You’d better run! And if I catch any of your men conscripting my people I’ll send them home with their arses kicked in.’

  The centurion looked up at him and raised a hand to halt his men, unable to reply and continue running. Putting a hand on his hips he threw his head back to gulp down the warm summer air, sweat already staining his padded subarmalis black beneath his armour.

  ‘Are you fucking mad? You stupid bastards are auxiliaries! The emperor will have the lot of you crucified!’

  Hramn shook his head and laughed mirthlessly.

  ‘I don’t see your emperor, or a soldier worthy of the name to nail me up! All I see is my spear, my sword, my shield, and my people in need of protection from you people! Now get off our fucking land and don’t come back unless you want to leave as naked as the day you were born!’

  He rode on, overtaking his men and calling them to a halt a mile further east.

  ‘If these bastards have tried to get in and out without being seen then they’ve not used the roads, but sneaked through our fields like the deceitful scum they are! We’ll make a sweep to the north and see what we can find! I want an eight-hundred pace front, one man every ten paces! If you see something out of the ordinary you shout, and if you hear a shout, you shout too, and ride for the point where the shout came from! And nobody dies today, not us and most definitely not them, not unless you want to be thigh-deep in legionaries while Batavodurum burns inside the week!’

  Leaving his chosen man to shake the century out into a line, he stared out across the farmland to the north with an expert eye.

  ‘What are you looking for?’

  He turned to find Kivilaz at his side, the veteran as comfortable in the saddle as any of his guardsmen.

  ‘If you’re a recruiting officer, probably with no more than a dozen men, and you hear us approaching, what do you do? We’ve ten times as many spears as you and we’re faster than you are, so you can’t fight us off and you can’t outrun us.’

  ‘In which case all I can do is hide. And the only place to hide out here is in the hedgerows.’

  ‘My thoughts exactly.’ Hramn looked up and down the century’s line, nodding approvingly at the speed with which his men were spreading out to either side of him. ‘Forward! Scour the ground for Romans, and keep your spears ready! Pay special attention to the hedges!’

  It took less than half a mile of progress to flush out the men they were looking for, shouts and horn calls summoning Hramn and Kivilaz to a spot where half a dozen soldiers and another centurion stood defiantly in a semi-circle of spear points with their swords drawn, twice their number of Batavi civilians huddled deep in the shelter of a thick hedge where the soldiers had presumably pushed them in an attempt to avoid detection.

  ‘You have no business to be threatening us! Stand aside and allow me to go about my legitimate business, as I am duly authorised by Legatus Munius Lupercus and the emp—’

  Hramn dismounted, landing so close to the officer that he involuntarily stepped back, raising his sword’s point at the Batavi’s face. Kivilaz stepped down from his own beast, shaking his head at the Roman.

  ‘Put your sword back in its scabbard, Centurion, or I’ll be forced to take it off you! There will be no blood shed here, not unless you’re foolish enough to start something I’ll have to finish for you!’ He waited for the Roman to lower his weapon, looking across the crop of manhood that the legionaries had gathered. ‘Firstly, your legatus has no jurisdiction on this land. The Batavi are an allied tribe, not a subject people of Rome, and our military service is freely given in return for taxation privileges. You are not permitted to conscript our men, and I will not tolerate this invasion of our territory.’

  The centurion shook his head in amazement.

  ‘Your fucking territory? The emperor has ordered our legatus to gather recruits for the fight against the pretender Vespasianus, and he specifically ordered your shithole little tribe to be included! So you have no choice, you stupid bastard, because when an emperor gives an ord—’

  ‘Decurion!’

  Hramn turned from his brooding consideration of the Roman officer to find one of his men at his elbow.

  ‘What is it?’

  The guardsman’s face was dark with anger, and he beckoned Hramn without speaking. Half-hidden behind a pair of soldiers a child of no more than twelve was weeping silently, using one hand to stop his torn tunic from falling off his body. His throat was bruised, and one of his eyes was starting to blacken, but is wasn’t the obvious physical damage that had caught the guardsman’s attention, but rather the way in which his eyes were fixed on the ground before him, and he was refusing to look up at the men around him. Sliding his sword slowly from its scabbard, Hramn eyeballed the legionaries standing in front of him with the dead-eyed expression his men had come to recognise as the precursor to violence, speaking slowly through gritted teeth.

  ‘Get out of my fucking way!’

  He stared at the closer of the two until the man’s nerve broke and he stood aside, then pushed the other out of his path as he stepped closer to the child.

  ‘Look at me.’

  Slowly, reluctantly, the boy raised his gaze to look into the centurion’s eyes, and the fear that Hramn saw there kindled the flame of anger burning in him. He looked around, finding a villager nodding at him.

  ‘It is exactly what it looks like. Those two took him into my barn, and after a short time he stopped shouting and started screaming.’

  The guardsmen looked at each other in horrified anger, and Hramn knew that a single word from him would see every one of the legionaries dead within a dozen heartbeats. He looked at Kivilaz, but the older man shook his head impassively.

  ‘If we kill these men we will pay for it a hundred times over. The Romans will have no choice but to attack in force. And I have a better alternative.’

  He turned to the legion centurion, whose grip on his sword’s hilt was white-knuckled.

  ‘It seems to me, Centurion, that you’ve made something of a mistake. A mistake which, were I not here to assist you, would have resulted in your untimely death.’

  He stared levelly at the officer’s clenched jaw and white face, knowing that the Roman was close to doing something foolish despite the forty guardsmen surrounding his party and the remainder of the century flooding in from either side.

  ‘I suggest you sheathe your sword, before someone does something unwise.’

  The centurion shook his head curtly.

  ‘Tell your men to sheathe theirs first.’

  Kivilaz stared at him for a moment before replying.

  ‘You want to die here then, I presume? I promised my people that I wouldn’t shed blood today, wouldn’t invite the revenge of your legion, but that was before I discovered that your men have been abusing our children!’

  The last word was a shout, and the Roman flinched visibly. Kivilaz took a breath, evidently struggling for self-control.

  ‘So here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to put up your swords. All of you. Then you’re going to take off your equipment. All of it.’ He raised a hand to forestall the centurion’s protest. ‘Wait until you’ve heard me out. All your equipment, and your belts. And you’re going to walk away with your lives, which is something you’ll look back on in old age, when you’ve lived those lives, fathered children, raised the children you already have, and on that day you’ll thank me for disregarding all my instincts. Because my instinct, Centurion, is to have you all beaten senseless, stripped, flogged half to death and then crucified in the village where this crime was committed. All of you, not just the men that committed the act. And it’ll be me doing the flogging, and me hammering the nails in. So you can choose. Talk it over with your men while I have my people escorted away from here.’

  He looked over the terrified soldiers, now surrounded by a ring of horsemen
with their spears pointing inwards.

  ‘Run if you like, but you won’t make twenty paces before we put you down.’

  At his signal the dismounted guardsmen shepherded the villagers away, ignoring the legionaries who stood helpless, their swords lowered. Hramn looked down at the centurion from his horse.

  ‘Well? You heard my prefect. How do you want to do this?’

  The centurion’s tone was bitter.

  ‘You’ll pay for this! All of you barbarian f—’

  Hramn shook his head.

  ‘Time’s up, Centurion, and I don’t need an hourglass to tell me that. So make your mind up. What will it be? A little embarrassment or the hardest death imaginable?’

  One of the legionaries made the decision for him, dropping his shield to the ground and then sheathing his sword. Unbuckling his belt, he dumped his weapons on the ground beside the shield, then started unlacing his plate armour. His comrades followed suit, and after a moment’s stare about him the officer reluctantly dropped his sword point first into the grass, dropping his belt and then struggling out of his scale armour while his men looked numbly on.

  ‘And the tunic belts. Let’s not let there be any doubt that you’re being punished.’

  The Romans glumly complied, allowing the hems of their tunics, usually belted above the knee in the military style, to fall to their upper calves. The centurion shook his head in red-faced anger, his scowl murderous.