Betrayal: The Centurions I

by Riches, Anthony

  ‘Jupiter!’

  More scorpions discharged their loads, each shot spitting an iron-tipped bolt into the rear of his defenceless infantrymen and dropping soldiers kicking and screaming onto the grass. He turned in amazement, staring aghast at the warships and realising that the men wearing the armour of the military crews were unkempt and dishevelled, their equipment hastily donned and unfastened, helmets askew on their heads as they hurried to reload the bolt throwers that were tearing into his army’s defenceless rear. Again his decision was instant, the only possible course of action. The rear rank would have to about-face and charge the moored warships, overrun their mutinous crews and stop the treacherous assault before it broke his men’s resolve, but even as the thought solidified in his mind, he realised that he was looking straight down the slides of the nearest warship’s weapons. With twin thumps both scorpions unleashed their bolts, and the unforgiving ground came up to meet him with enough force to knock him senseless as his horse keeled over.

  River Rhenus, August AD 69

  One moment the Roman commander was looming over his battle line, his head turned to stare at the warships whose crews seemed to have taken leave of their senses, the next he was gone, his horse shot out from beneath him.

  ‘There! That’s what I was waiting for!’

  Draco watched as Kivilaz touched his heels to the horse’s side, walking the beast out into the gap between his men and the Tungrian cohort facing them. Bracing his thighs he stood up in the saddle, pulling his cloak away from the soiled tunic beneath. A handprint was clearly visible on the white wool, its original deep red now almost black but still recognisable as blood, arching his back to present it to them as clearly as possible and shouting a challenge to the enemy soldiers before him.

  ‘Who will avenge him?’

  The reply was almost instant.

  ‘We will avenge him!’

  He repeated the question, pointing to the bloody handprint on his chest.

  ‘Who will avenge him?’

  ‘We will avenge him!’

  Clenching the pointing hand into a fist, he raised it over his head and bellowed the words that they were waiting for.

  ‘Proud men of the Tungri! Join us, and reclaim your lost pride!’

  Centurions stepped out of the auxiliary cohort’s ranks where they stood on the left of the terrified Frisians, raising their swords and blowing signal whistles. Their prefect started forward, only to find himself facing his own first spear, sword drawn and grim-faced.

  ‘No, Prefect. This cohort no longer serves Rome. On your knees.’

  The Tungrian cohort was suddenly moving, wheeling the four-deep lines that had faced the Batavi a moment before through ninety degrees so that their spears and shields were aimed at the left flank of the Frisian cohort, whose men were shrinking away from them in amazement, unable to believe what they were seeing. The manoeuvre completed, the soldiers paused momentarily, waiting for the command they were expecting as their senior centurion, having handed his astonished prefect over to the custody of a hard-faced officer, swept his sword down to point at their hapless neighbours, whose soldiers were backing away from his men’s presented spear points with disbelieving stares, their tidy line fragmenting as the trickle of men turning to flee swelled with their terror.

  ‘Tungriii! Spears … throw!’

  The Germans stamped forward a pace at their senior centurion’s command, hurling their spears into the men who remained in the Frisian left flank, wide open to the assault, their own officers still dithering at this most unexpected development. Unprepared for the attack, the rain of iron focused on that end of the hapless cohort’s line effectively destroyed it, spear heads thrown at such close range either finding the unarmoured points on their targets’ bodies, necks, arms and legs, or simply punching through the auxiliaries’ mail armour into the flesh beneath. The air was rent by the screams and imprecations of scores of wounded and dying men, sobbing howls of pain and anger, and what order remained in their disintegrating was suddenly no more than a mob of panicking, terrified, individuals, all thought save that of survival gone from their heads.

  ‘Tungriii! Attack!’

  The waiting soldiers, swords already drawn, marched forward in the manner that had been drilled into them a thousand times and began the harvest of those men who, already wounded, were unable to escape, or who either disdained the chance to run or were unable to find a way through the mass of their comrades quickly enough.

  Kivilaz grinned at Hramn, his eyes alive with delight as he turned to the waiting Batavi militia.

  ‘Batavi! Attack!’

  The tribesmen lurched into motion, not throwing their spears as they closed with the Ubian cohort but hefting them underhand, ready to begin the remorseless grinding advance in which they had been drilled so assiduously over the preceding months, and roaring the paean that they had been taught as they had practised the advance. Those men of the enemy cohort who were still standing their ground, already shocked and reeling at the discharge of dozens of scorpion bolts into their rear, and the unexpected onslaught on the neighbouring cohort, were unable to absorb this further threat and retain their cohesion. Disintegrating before their prefect’s startled eyes they too literally burst in all directions, one moment still formed despite the cruel attack on their rear from the warships, the next no better than a frenzied mob of men running in all directions with survival their only aim. Those soldiers who ran at the Batavi died on their spears, as the militia’s warriors instinctively obeyed their training and the muscle memory of long months of drill, punching with their shields to stop the running men and then spearing them, punching again to smash their wounded and dying victims from their spear blades before setting themselves to advance again, held upright by the firm grip on their collars of the men behind them.

  Amid the battlefield’s sudden chaos, Hramn sat watching the mayhem from his saddle, nodding grimly as he spotted Labeo leading his cavalry cohort away to the east, clearly seeking to escape the battle’s abrupt debacle before they too were embroiled in the spreading, bloody chaos.

  ‘Let me go after them!’

  Kivilaz shook his head without taking his eyes off the chaotic scene before him.

  ‘No, Decurion. Today is not the day.’

  Unable to contain his anger, Hramn rose up in the saddle and drew breath to roar a leather-lunged challenge at the fleeing traitor.

  ‘Labeo!’

  The Batavi officer seemed to hear his name, reining his horse in and looking across the battlefield’s bloody carnage. Hramn drew his sword and raised it over his head in an angry gesture.

  ‘You’d better run, traitor! We’ll hang you up by your guts for this! Run! Run to your Roman masters! We’ll see you soon enough!’

  If he even heard the threat over the screams and howls of the battle, Labeo showed no sign of it, simply raising his hand in salute and then spurring his horse on, away to the east. Hramn sank back into his saddle, shaking his head in disgust.

  ‘There’s nowhere for you to run but the Old Camp, traitor. And we’ll see you there soon enough.’

  River Rhenus, August AD 69

  Aquillius came to his senses after what could only have been a few seconds, finding that he had mercifully been thrown clear of his dying horse, the animal kicking and screaming on the ground a few feet away as its blood-spattered body convulsed at the pain of a pair of scorpion bolts buried deep in its side. Staggering to his feet, he fumbled his sword out of its scabbard and groggily stared around him at the scene of horror into which his ordered battle plan had descended in the moments while he had been unconscious. The Frisian cohort was now only recognisable as a military formation by their red tunics but was little more than a seething mob of men fighting to escape their former allies’ spears and swords. The Ubian cohort had also disintegrated, the ground at their rear littered with the corpses of men killed by scorpion bolts that protruded from their sides and backs. He could hear rather than see the Batavi militia that
he knew would be advancing into their disordered ranks, a gift from the gods for Civilis, the chance to blood his men against an enemy who was already beaten and needed only the mercy stroke. Looking to his left he saw that the Batavian cavalry cohort were riding away at a brisk canter, clearly recognising a lost situation when they saw one, and he watched as Labeo, recognisable by his crested helmet and ornate armour, reined his horse in momentarily, looking out over the battle’s chaos as someone shouted something in the guttural German language away behind the Batavi line. Their eyes locked, and the Batavian prefect shrugged resignedly before saluting and spurring his beast away, leaving Aquillius standing alone in the middle of the battle’s carnage. Looking at the scene of chaos before him, he saw the Roman prefect who had been in command of the Tungrians being stripped of his magnificent armour and weapons at sword point by a pair of his own centurions, while the Frisian and Ubian officers were being led away from their surrendering soldiers and herded together under the threat of dozens of raised spears.

  Shaking his head he came to his senses, the wits seeming to snap back into his body from wherever they had been wandering while he’d staggered upright and gazed glassy-eyed about him, the potential victim of any man with a spear.

  ‘Fuck …’

  The battle was already lost, and he had been reduced from commander to foot soldier in the moments while he had been unconscious. Pulling off his helmet, he ripped away the crest that stood above its iron bowl and which marked him as a target for every enemy warrior who saw him, snapping the leather cords that held it tautly in place and pulling the brass mount loose from its sleeve. Tossing it away he pulled the helmet back on and laced the cheek guards tight, then discarded his silver decorated scabbard and medal harness, cutting at the straps with his dagger rather than wasting time with the buckles. Cutting away the leather ties that held on his greaves, he completed his transformation from officer to soldier, looking around for the best route out of the battle’s swirling chaos. His army was surrendering in ever greater numbers, throwing down their weapons and pleading for their lives with an enemy who, whilst not treating their capitulation with any subtlety, was refraining from the massacre that might have been expected. Knowing that he would be captured within minutes if he failed to act, and swiftly betrayed by his former soldiers in hope of some sort of favour from their captors, he made a decision and turned to his left, running hard in pursuit of Labeo’s fleeing Batavian horsemen in the only direction that held any prospect of safety.

  A Tungrian soldier blundered into his path, staggering away from a fight with his helmet dented and his wits momentarily absent, and Aquillius put the gladius’s blade through his neck without a second thought, stripping the shield from his lifeless fingers and shouldering the corpse aside. Another Tungrian came at him with a spear, his own shield lost, thrusting in with the weapon so inexpertly that it was all that Aquillius could do not to bellow a correction at him, as he pushed the lunge aside with the shield and stabbed deep into the hapless soldier’s thigh with the gladius before ripping the blade free, nodding to himself as the man stared helplessly at the rope of blood running down his leg.

  Moving on, weaving around the knots of men fighting forlorn, doomed actions, he saw a horse, still saddled, standing over the body of a mail-shirted man with a scorpion bolt protruding from his back, lying face down on top of a vivid yellow shield. The shield’s colour made the man one of Labeo’s men, whose mutinous comrades had evidently found the cavalryman too appealing a target to ignore. Moving quickly, knowing that a beast of such quality would be a prize beyond the dreams of most of the men on the battlefield, he tossed aside the Tungrian infantryman’s shield, shoved his gladius into his belt and snatched up the dead rider’s long spear and rolled him off the shield, tugging the brass-bound yellow oval onto his back. As he pulled the horse’s reins from the corpse’s unresisting fingers and prepared to mount, something made him look over his shoulder, barely in time to duck beneath a swinging hack of a gladius’s blade, the sword’s owner lunging in with a triumphant snarl that became a cry of agony as Aquillius swayed to one side and kicked him in the kneecap with brutal speed and power, snapping the joint. Snapping a punch into the reeling man’s face that broke his nose and shot blood across his armour, he followed up with a sweeping boot hook that dumped the stunned soldier onto the ground, then stamped down with his hobnails into the helpless man’s unprotected crotch, wrenching a high-pitched scream from his lips. Startled, the horse shied away from him, pulling him bodily away from the crippled soldier before he could finish the tottering man off.

  ‘Get him!’

  The battle was almost done, most of the auxiliary troops now either face down or kneeling, terrified, under rebel swords and spears, and Aquillius’s rage-fuelled battering of the hapless soldier had been enough to attract the attention of more than one of his victim’s comrades. Dragging the horse back to him with a vicious wrench at its reins he vaulted into the saddle as the closest of the Tungrians turned with their swords raised, pulling the animal’s head round to the east and digging his boots into its flanks. Galloping away from the Tungrians Aquillius looked to his right, at the full cohort of Batavi horsemen standing in a formation so neat that it would have graced any parade ground, and he quailed, knowing that they could ride him down with ease. But the luck that had deserted him a moment before now shone brightly again, the enemy guardsmen looking across the battlefield at him without any intention of giving chase, as if the capture of a single beaten soldier were beneath their dignity. Following the path that Labeo’s men had taken moments earlier the fugitive centurion rode away to the east, leaving behind him the scene of an abject defeat while he plotted the ways in which he would take his revenge for the betrayal and dismemberment of his army.

  ‘It seems you have been a busy man these past few months.’

  Kivilaz acknowledged Hramn’s barbed comment with a nod of his head, as the two men watched in silence for a moment while the last corpses that were all that remained of the Roman cohorts were dragged away by their defeated brothers-in-arms to the pyre, while their men feasted on the supplies that had been intended for the defeated army. One of the guardsmen walked up with a flask and two cups, bowing to Kivilaz and handing him the wine. Pouring a cup for his comrade, he took one for himself and turned back to address Hramn’s unspoken question.

  ‘The Tungri have been mine from that moment on the road back from the Old Camp, with a little prompting from my messengers. After all, that fortress has been wide open for any man to enter, since they emptied the place out and sent most of its strength south.’

  ‘And the fleet? How did you manage that?’

  ‘I had divine assistance.’

  Hramn frowned.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  Kivilaz grinned, draining his wine and pouring another cupful, gesturing for the decurion to do the same.

  ‘You will recall what I told the elders, at our meeting in the grove? About the Bructeri seer Veleda?’

  ‘Yes. But one priestess?’

  ‘One priestess with a following the length and breadth of the great river’s valley. One priestess worshipped so fervently that she can bring about peace between a German tribe and a Roman subject people with a simple pronouncement. One priestess revered so strongly that a simple message from her to the fleet’s German oarsmen, telling them that they held the destiny of their people in their hands, was enough to put them on our side overnight.’

  ‘Clever.’

  Kivilaz shrugged.

  ‘Oh I’m clever alright, but I’m more than that, Hramn. Clever is never enough against Rome. To defeat Rome you need luck, and stealth, and guile … and one thing more. You need burning hatred. When that bastard Capito had my brother murdered for the crime of accompanying me south to meet with Vindex, I swore a blood oath over his corpse, in the moment they gave me to say goodbye before they buried him, expecting that the sight of my dead brother would unman me. But it didn’t. It lit a blazing
fire in me, a fire I have kindled until it is hotter than a smith’s forge. Hot enough to burn Rome out of our lives for ever.’

  Hramn looked into his prince’s face, and saw the hard implacable lines of a man who was at war.

  ‘And Vespasianus? What will you do when he triumphs over Vitellius, as you believe he will? Will that be the moment when we make peace with Rome?’

  ‘Vespasianus? Vespasianus entreated me to bring revolt and chaos to Rome’s northern border. And revolt and chaos he shall have. I will launch an onslaught against Rome that will shake the stones on the Palatine Hill.’

  He emptied the cup again and set it down, turning to look at the fire that was being kindled to consume the dead auxiliaries’ bodies.

  ‘Vespasianus wanted a revolt? I’ll give him everything he asked for. And more. Much, much more.’

  Historical Note

  Researching the Centurions trilogy was a fresh challenge for a writer who has, over the course of writing nine previous stories in the Empire series, become a little blasé about the historical background, events, military units and tactics, weapons and armour and just about anything else you could care to name about the late second century. To find oneself suddenly over a hundred years adrift of one’s chosen period of history was in one respect easy enough – after all, not that much changed over the period in many ways – and yet a bit of a head-scratcher from several other perspectives. The revolt of the Batavi tribe is on the face of it a simple thing – Romans upset tribal mercenaries, who then rise up and teach them an almighty lesson as to how to manage subject peoples and their armies – and yet the history, and the story that can be teased out of those dry pages left to us by the primary sources Tacitus and Cassius, is far more complex than anything I could have predicted.