by Ian Ross
For over twenty years he had fought in the wars of empire. He had led men in battle, but this was the first time that he had held supreme command in the field. There was little honour in it, he thought. Several hundred dead, but he doubted if anyone in Rome or even Treveris would even hear of this brief campaign. Did the great men of the empire care who lived or died out here on the forsaken frontier?
‘Send word for the interpreter, Bappo,’ he said. At once a messenger rode off across the field. The toad-faced man came riding back within moments.
‘How’s our prince of the Chamavi?’
‘He’ll live, dominus,’ Bappo said, with an insouciant shrug. ‘The surgeon took the arrow out, but it split the bone, the femur. He’ll walk again, but not for a long time yet.’
Castus gave a satisfied grunt. He slid down from the saddle, rubbed the nose of his horse, and took a drink of well-watered wine that tasted of the goatskin canteen. A soldier brought him breakfast, dry bread and oil with cheese, and he ate standing beside his horse. Then he passed the reins to an orderly and strode towards the river, signalling for his staff to follow him.
There were boats pulled up on the bank, amid the wreckage of smashed Frankish canoes and the corpses that lolled in the shallows. The river here was wide, flowing between flat grasslands threaded with streams and small marshy lakes. As the boat carried him out towards the anchored ships, Castus scanned the far bank. What he had first taken for low trees or bushes were people, he saw now. A multitude of people gathered at the waterside. Their voices carried across to him: a low keening hum of anger, of grief.
Senecio was waiting at the deck rail of the Bellona as the boat came alongside.
‘I congratulate you on your victory, excellency!’ he called.
‘Good thing you got here on time,’ Castus said with a wry smile, clambering forward as the boat bumped against the hull of the galley and gripping the rungs of the boarding ladder. Fine thing it would be, he thought, to slip and tumble into the river now, in the hour of his triumph...
Three strong pulls and he hauled himself up, Senecio grabbing his arm to help him onto the deck. The standard-bearer came up behind Castus, carrying the long pole with the unwieldy purple banner.
‘We pulled all night from Tricensima, dominus,’ the navarch said. ‘Difficult with the barges – one of them ran aground on a mudbank but we hauled her off. We arrived here at sun-up, just as the first of them started to cross in their canoes.’ He gestured with his chin towards the crowd gathering on the far bank. ‘Want me to signal Pinnata and Satyra to throw a few bolts into them?’
Castus shook his head. He arranged his cloak and strode forward along the deck to where it narrowed into a raised gangway. The oarsmen were still at their benches, their tunics dark with sweat, some of them bare-chested. As they caught sight of him they got up, tired but grinning, and began to cheer. Even the men on the lower tier scrambled up from the reeking darkness, raising their arms in salute.
From the southern riverbank, the cheer was returned, the troops thronging the waterside catching sight of the commander’s banner streaming from the stern of the warship and lifting their spears and shields as they yelled.
Standing tall on the deck in the hot sun, Castus felt himself lifted by the voices of his men. Just for a moment, he allowed himself to glory in it. Then he turned to the far riverbank, staring across the blue-grey water at the gathered barbarians. On the opposite bank, the men of the Thirtieth Legion were lined up with the cavalry behind them. The two hosts faced each other in the sun, quarter of a mile of strong river current between them.
‘Send a messenger,’ Castus said, gesturing back over his shoulder. ‘I want the interpreter, Flavius Bappo, and the Chamavi prince we captured. I’ll need a cut green branch. And request Tribune Dexter to send twenty of his best archers, too.’
Then he stepped across to the rail, bracing his palms on the smooth worn wood. The idea that had come to him the night before, whirling in on the edge of sleep, was keen in his mind now. Would it work? Did he even have the authority for it? He did not know, but the day was carrying him forward and he had no better schemes.
It took nearly half an hour for the message to be relayed back across the river and the boats to return, packed with men. The dismounted archers came aboard, most still in their mail and scale, bows already strung and quivers filled with fresh arrows. The men in the boat lifted the injured barbarian captive up to the deck, with Bappo hopping up the ladder after him.
‘Navarch,’ Castus said, still regarding the horde on the opposite bank. ‘Take us across to just beyond bowshot.’ Senecio, guessing his intention, had already raised the leafy branch on a pole above the stern. The symbol of parley, but it was best to be careful all the same.
The oarsmen settled at their benches, the voice of the rowing master shouted the rhythm, and the ship moved slowly up against the current to where her anchor lay in the riverbed. The deck crew hauled on the bow hawser, and the narrow hull bucked slightly as the anchor was plucked free and rose, spouting, from the water. The Bellona turned slowly in midstream, the oarsmen on one side pulling while the other side backed, and then slid gracefully across the rippling current. The two smaller galleys, Satyra and Pinnata, slipped across after her and took up their stations, fore and aft in line with the riverbank. On every vessel the ballista crews had their weapons loaded and trained.
From this distance, it was easy to make out the different groups among the barbarians. Many of them were indeed women and children, Castus noticed, but there were numerous warriors among them too: either those who had managed to escape across the river before the galleys arrived, or older men who no longer went out with the raiding bands.
At the centre of the host, under a banner of streamers mounted on a pole, stood a deep-chested man dressed in a scale cuirass, an old Roman cavalry helmet clasped under his arm. His thick yellow hair was greying, and he wore a moustache on his top lip that hung lower than his chin. No mistaking him, Castus thought. Ragnachar, paramount chief of the Chamavi.
‘Bappo, to me,’ he said, without turning his head. Even at this distance, he felt his gaze locked with the barbarian leader. The only sound now was the slow creak of the oars as the galley held its position. Castus stood as tall and still as he could, his standard-bearer at his back, flanked by a pair of soldiers from the Thirtieth Legion, big men in polished scale armour, with shields and spears.
The interpreter idled up to the rail beside him.
‘Tell Ragnachar, King of the Chamavi,’ Castus said, in a stern voice loud enough to carry over the water, ‘that I am Aurelius Castus, Dux Limitis Germaniae, and I command here by order of the Caesar Flavius Crispus and his father, the Invincible Augustus Constantine.’ Most of them would not understand his words, but they would guess the meaning from his tone.
Bappo cried out the address, the string of names and titles almost incomprehensible in the Germanic tongue. The barbarian host remained silent, watching and waiting.
‘Tell him that his warriors have broken the treaty with Rome by invading our province. My troops have slain hundreds, and taken hundreds more captive. These prisoners will be sold as slaves.’
This time a great cry and a wail went up from the crowd on the bank as Bappo yelled out the translation. Castus saw many of the barbarian warriors surge forwards into the shallows, brandishing their weapons. Women raised hands to their faces and tugged at their unbound hair. Ragnachar remained still, his posture betraying nothing.
‘They ask,’ the translator said, ‘why they have a treaty with Rome, when the Romans attack their people and steal the tribute payments they promised? They mean the subsidies, dominus.’
‘I know what they mean,’ Castus said under his breath. He noted the detail about the stolen payments.
‘Boats coming out,’ said Senecio. Castus had already spotted them: half a dozen canoes edging from the bank, warriors crouched over the paddles. He heard the navarch’s orders to his ballista crews. ‘Any o
f them get close, drill them. Don’t wait for my signal.’
He looked to Castus, who inhaled sharply and nodded. The sun was hot, and he fought the urge to wipe the sweat from his face. He could reveal no sign of weakness now.
‘Show them the prisoner,’ Castus said quietly.
He had ordered the injured captive, Conda, to be concealed beneath the awning at the stern of the ship, with archers placed on either side of him, arrows nocked to their bows. Now he was carried forth, supported by soldiers. He was a much younger man than Castus had thought, barely more than twenty. His beard was downy gold, his sweating face twisted with shame and the agony of his wound.
A groan went through the assembled barbarians as they saw their chieftain’s son displayed on the deck of the Bellona. But Castus was still watching Ragnachar. He saw the chief flinch visibly as he recognised the figure on the ship, then take two staggering steps forward into the water, raising both arms towards his son as if he could reach out and touch him.
Just for a moment, Castus wondered how he would feel in this barbarian chieftain’s position. If it were his own son, his Sabinus, displayed like a trophy by an enemy leader. For two long heartbeats he felt a strange affinity for the enemy chief’s distress. Then he drew in a breath, held it, and exhaled. No mercy now. Only severity.
‘Tell the chieftain Ragnachar,’ he cried, his voice rasping in his throat, ‘that his son was captured with arms in his hands. His life should be forfeit. But tell him this: I will return his son to him, if he gives me in exchange all the prisoners his raiders have captured, and fifty other hostages. Youths aged between fourteen and eighteen, sons of the most noble families of the Chamavi and Chattuari.’
Shouts came back across the water at once, many of the other warriors protesting loudly. Castus glanced to the interpreter.
‘They say,’ Bappo told him, with a slight smile, ‘that you have hostages already. The men you have taken can be your hostages...’
‘They are captives of war,’ Castus said curtly. ‘To accept their submission I need hostages willingly surrendered. Tell them these youths will be well treated, as guests of the Roman Empire, so long as the Chamavi and Chattuari keep the peace on the frontier.’
Now, he thought, let’s see how much power this Ragnachar holds over his people.
‘Dominus,’ Senecio mused from behind him, tight-lipped. ‘It’s not my place, I know, but surely it can’t be wise to return the chief’s son?’
‘He won’t be fit enough to fight for many months,’ Castus said from the corner of his mouth, not turning his head. ‘Besides, I’m told these Franks elect their chiefs. If we just keep Ragnachar’s boy, the others could depose him and make war in revenge. This way, there’s far more of them with something to lose.’
He heard the navarch’s dry chuckle. ‘Oh, the wily Ulysses!’
Bappo was still conducting a long-distance debate with the warriors on the riverbank, growing increasingly heated as he yelled and they yelled back.
‘Silence,’ Castus ordered. A few last shouts came across from the barbarian throng. ‘Tell the chief,’ he said, ‘that his people have until noon to surrender the hostages and send them across the river. If this is not done, I will put his son to death right here in front of him.’
He signalled to one of his bodyguards, who drew his sword and held it up, the blade flashing. Ragnachar stood in the water, staring for a long moment, then threw back his head and shouted.
‘He says,’ Bappo told Castus, ‘that he wants your sworn oath that the hostages will not be harmed.’
‘My oath,’ Castus called back over the water, ‘as a soldier and a Roman. On all the gods, I swear that the hostages will not be harmed, if Ragnachar and his people do not trouble this province again.’
Bappo cried out the translation, and Castus watched the barbarian chieftain stagger back from the water and disappear into the mass of his people, covering his face with both hands.
‘Now,’ Castus said, and glanced up at the sun, still only halfway to its zenith in the eastern horizon. ‘We have a few hours to wait, I think.’
The rowing master called the stroke, and the galley swung back out into midstream once more, to anchor in her previous station. One of the navarch’s slaves brought a folding stool and set it on the deck behind the steersman’s position, and Castus seated himself, trying not to let his agitation show. Would he really execute the young captive in cold blood? He did not know, and hoped he would not have to test his own resolve. Sitting stiffly, he took a cup of wine and sipped gratefully. His throat felt tight and sour from the words he had spoken.
‘Don’t you mind negotiating with your own people like that?’ he asked Bappo.
The interpreter blew out his cheeks, then shrugged. ‘They aren’t my people, dominus,’ he said. ‘I’m of the Tubantes; they’re Chamavi. You Romans think all Franks are the same!’
Castus shrugged. True enough. He remembered Brinno telling him once about the different tribes and their conflicts.
The sun climbed higher; the oarsmen sweated on the exposed deck as they studied the barbarian shore. They could rig the canopies and give the men some shade, Castus considered, but with the enemy still gathered on the riverbank the Bellona needed to remain cleared for action, ready to move, or fight if required.
A movement caught his eye: somebody waving a bunched cloak from the galley anchored downstream. Castus frowned – he knew the signal. Enemy in sight. A moment later, they all heard the shouts across the water.
Senecio ran forward at once, scrambling up onto the triangular platform behind the figurehead. Castus remained standing, peering into the long reach of the river downstream. Where the blue water met the blue sky, a line of shapes winked into view.
‘What is it?’ he demanded as Senecio returned.
‘We have company, dominus,’ the navarch said. ‘Frankish war boats, fully manned and armed, and coming this way.’
*
There were six of them, much bigger craft than the Chamavi canoes. Between raised prow and stern, each boat was packed with men, pulling hard on the oars to drive against the river current.
‘Salii,’ Senecio said. ‘Their territory lies just downstream from here.’ The galley crew had already rushed to their stations, the oarsmen to their benches and the artillery crews to their ballistae, swinging the weapons round to face this new threat. On deck the archers were crouched behind the shields mounted on the railings, arrows ready.
‘Friends or foes?’ Castus asked.
‘Could be either. They’re split up into different groups, no overall leader. Some are worse then others. They’re sea raiders and brigands, mostly.’
Shading his eyes, Castus could see a figure standing proudly at the prow of the leading boat. A tall man, dressed in red with his cloak thrown back and his arms folded. The boats kept on coming, oblivious to the Roman artillery trained upon them, sliding up the river channel between the ships and the far riverbank. Only then did the regular pulse of their oars slacken.
‘Bappo, find out who they are,’ Castus said. He walked to the rail and stood braced, staring at the figure in the lead boat as the interpreter shouted his message. Something about his appearance stirred a memory, almost an intuition. It was not the leader who answered, but one of the warriors in the second boat.
‘They’re Salii, as the navarch says,’ Bappo reported. ‘They’ve come to see why we are on the river in such force.’
‘Tell them we can go where we choose,’ Castus said. ‘This river belongs to us. It’s they who must explain themselves.’
Again the cries went back and forth. Castus could see some of the boats throwing out anchors to keep them steady in the current. He could see the warriors aboard the boats more clearly, too: twenty or thirty in each vessel, well-muscled men with hair to their shoulders and thick moustaches, all of them bristling with weapons, their round shields laid ready beside them. Some of them were calling out to the mass of Chamavi on the riverbank, making abusiv
e gestures and raising mocking laughter.
‘Enough of this,’ Castus said. ‘We’re not here to listen to barbarian banter. Tell them that one boat can approach, and their leading man can come aboard.’
He glanced at Senecio, who nodded grimly. A single boatload of warriors could pose little threat to the Bellona, but Castus noticed the tension of the men on deck, the gathering anticipation. The Franks had been their enemies for too long to be trusted.
The men in the leading boat seemed to expect the summons; they bent to their oars at once, bringing the vessel smoothly around and across the water towards the bigger Roman galley. The Franks at the rowing benches gazed back over their shoulders as the two vessels met, their gazes mingling hostility and a kind of fascination. Then their oars slid inboard, the swept prow of the boat nosing against the hull of the galley, and the leader in the red tunic stepped up nimbly onto the stem post and across the narrowing gap of water, climbing in over the rail and onto the galley’s deck.
Castus narrowed his eyes, certain that his intuition had been correct but scarcely able to believe it. The Salian leader was a young man, about thirty, and as heavily armed as his men. He wore a Roman spatha on one hip and a long knife on the other, with an axe stuck through his belt. His brooch and buckles glittered with gold and gemstones. He walked proudly down the gangway, oblivious to the oarsmen staring up at him from the tiers of benches to either side.
‘His name is Bonitus,’ Bappo said. ‘War chief of the northriver Salii.’
A Roman name, Castus thought with interest. He nodded, waiting until the young warrior reached the poop deck. ‘Tell him that I am Aurelius Castus, and I command this frontier in the name of the emperor. If he comes as a friend of Rome, he is welcome.’
Bappo started to speak, but the chief cut him off, speaking in accented Latin. ‘All my people are friends of Rome,’ he said. But there was a note of defiance in his voice still. ‘Now I see why you are here!’ he went on, gesturing to the mass of Chamavi on the riverbank, and the bound captive seated on the deck. The prisoner glared back at him; clearly these two had met before.
