Siege

by Geraint Jones

‘The double march.’ Livius spoke up from somewhere behind me, my first indication that he still lived.

  ‘But who’s calling it?’ Titus spoke, and my panted breath eased knowing that he was still with us.

  The German shouts came again, closer now. Some were excited. Others angry.

  ‘Brando,’ Titus called along the line of shields. ‘What are they saying?’

  For a moment, there was silence.

  Then: ‘Brando’s dead,’ Stumps shouted against the rain.

  The words were a gentle slap in my face, and nothing more. We were still in the killing ground. Fear and excitement were making my limbs tingle with nervous energy. The enemy would come again, and more men would die. Now was the time for survival. Like the crows, grief and guilt would come when the battle had broken.

  Trumpets blared once more.

  ‘Century!’ Albus hollered against the winds, deciding that he would follow the trumpet’s order. ‘Form into column!’

  ‘Form into column,’ men answered automatically, and section commander and veteran went about pushing men into place, their actions hurried and nervous, knowing that we were weaker in this formation if the enemy chose to attack again.

  ‘Prepare to double!’ Albus called. ‘Double march!’

  And so we began to run, my shield and gaze turned out to the left, certain that the German warriors would smell this weakness and close in for the kill.

  But there was nothing.

  ‘The torches are coming closer!’ someone shouted, and I watched as the beads of light danced and weaved in the darkness.

  ‘They’re getting near,’ Stumps warned, and I could hear him choke back fear. ‘Does Albus think we can just run home?’

  Perhaps the centurion did, for as the trumpet’s notes continued to wail ahead of us, we passed the first band of torchlit German warriors. Some of their bearded faces looked our way, hurling oaths and spit, but most of the tribesmen had their eyes fastened to the ground, uncaring of our retreat.

  Because there was loot to be had.

  The ground about us was scattered with the discarded possessions of the civilians, and on to this windfall the tribesmen fell. As I watched the thick carpet of torchlight in the distance, I realized now in which direction the enemy horde was moving.

  ‘They’re going to loot the fort!’ I shouted against the storm. ‘They’re going east!’

  East – away from the river and its bridges. Away from Roman lands. The enemy blocking force had chosen loot over battle, and no man contested our hurried formation with anything more deadly than a cruel smile or a stream of curses.

  The trumpet’s call was closer now, the sound of clashing blades and screams a memory carried away by the wind.

  Instead, we heard the rumble of hoof beats.

  ‘Cavalry front!’ Albus called instantly. ‘Form square! Fucking move! Form square! Go! Go! Move!’

  No man wasted a moment, and shield overlapped shield, men in the front ranks calling for javelins as they knelt in the mud, and we prepared to receive either an enemy’s charge, or our own deliverance.

  ‘Make or break,’ Stumps snorted.

  The hoof beats came closer.

  ‘If I don’t make it back,’ Titus said into the darkness, ‘I buried my and Metella’s stash under the granary.’

  Stumps snorted. ‘Now you fucking tell me.’

  ‘Brace yourselves,’ I urged my friends.

  The horses were upon us.

  69

  Roman cavalry.

  Dozens of them, their beasts’ nostrils snorting in the night. The smell of fear and panic made them skittish, and the cavalry officer’s steed shifted nervously beneath its rider as he shouted against the storm.

  ‘Keep going!’ he ordered. ‘Follow the road! We’ve cleared it, and the legion’s coming! Keep going and you’ll run right into them!’

  ‘How far?’ Albus called.

  ‘Eight miles, but they crossed an hour ago, coming at the double! I’ll send twenty of my blokes with you!’ the cavalryman shouted. ‘Just follow them and the road!’

  The century was already forming into column before Albus could order it.

  ‘Double march!’ he bellowed.

  And we ran to meet the legions.

  We found them in less than an hour of scorched lungs and aching shoulders. Muscles pulled and burned, but no man complained – we were a final effort from sanctuary. A final push from home. The hobnails of our sandals had sounded like music as we had hit the paved road that ran west, its stony course leading us into the wide front ranks of the imposing First Legion, the faces of its soldiers etched with disappointment when they saw that it was Romans who arrived with the dawn, and not an enemy they had burst lungs to meet in battle.

  Looking behind us, it seemed that they would be denied their moment of combat, for the lightening horizon was empty but for the galloping scouts of the Rhine legions.

  ‘They’ve all gone east!’ one called the news as he thundered by. ‘You’re clear, lads!’

  ‘Fuck me,’ Stumps murmured, wiping sweat and rain from his eyes. ‘We made it.’

  Not all of us.

  ‘What happened to Brando?’ I asked as the inevitable grief crashed into my chest like a boulder.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Stumps replied, chin dropping to his chest. ‘One moment he was there, the next he was gone.’

  ‘The Batavian?’ a soldier asked, his name as unknown to me as Brando’s was to him. ‘He took a spear in the chest,’ he told us. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You get the one that did him in?’ Stumps asked after a moment.

  The man nodded.

  ‘At least that’s something. Thank you.’

  I looked at our surroundings. The light of day struggled to break free of the storm, as we had done ourselves. Wind and rain still scoured our skin, but I saw the thick ranks of the First Legion stretching as they took up position on a crest that straddled the road, their imposing cohorts a bulwark between us and the enemy. We were truly safe. Looking at our own ranks, I saw that Brando was one of only a few to fall.

  ‘I just can’t believe it,’ Titus said to me, seeing the same.

  ‘They went after your coins,’ Stumps grunted.

  ‘They won’t find them. But they’re welcome if they do. We made it from the forest to here. I’ll take that.’

  Fatigue and orders kept us from further words. Having checked in with officers of the First, Albus marched us onwards, moving along the ranks to pass news to men with anxious faces awaiting tidings of comrades in the cohort.

  ‘All the centuries made it back,’ Albus said when it came our turn to hear the words. ‘First and Second caught it badly. The others not so bad.’

  ‘What about the civvies?’ Stumps asked on my behalf. My stomach was like ice as I awaited the news. ‘Did they all leg it?’

  ‘Only some,’ Albus answered. ‘We’ll find out on the Rhine.’

  ‘I’m sure she made it,’ Stumps offered to me. ‘She’s not an idiot. She’ll have stuck with the troops.’

  I believed that, but not all of the troops had survived. With the First and Second Centuries badly mauled, what chance was there for an unarmed civilian?

  ‘She’ll be fine,’ Titus added. ‘You don’t help her or yourself by worrying.’

  But what else was there to do? And so, for those final miles, I thought of Linza. I thought of her body alongside Brando’s. I thought of the enemy emptying their pockets, and crows emptying their eye sockets. I thought of maggots wriggling in their flesh, and wolves gnawing their bones. So it was that, as the storm slipped into the distance and my sandals hit the wood of a pontoon bridge, I thought of nothing but death, and my failure prevent it.

  ‘I can’t believe we made it back to the Rhine.’ Stumps grinned, slapping my shoulder. ‘Cheer up, Felix, we made it!’

  But Brando had not, and I was certain of the same fate for Linza. I opened my mouth to say as much, but as the brown waters of the Rhine swirled benea
th us, my eyes fell upon someone who had survived the night, and who now stood smiling on the western bank of the river.

  ‘Welcome back, boys!’ H called to the men of what had once been his century, delighting in each face that he recognized.

  As my own feet left the wooden boards and hit the soil that was the Roman Empire, H fell in alongside us. His smile slipped as he saw that Brando was absent from the ranks, but he fought to be positive. To make it a moment of victory, and not defeat.

  ‘It’s good to see you, boss.’ Titus meant it. His words were echoed by those around me.

  ‘I’m glad you’re alive,’ I added quickly. ‘Have you seen Linza?’

  The man shook his head. ‘But most of the civvies made it, Felix, and she’s a young one with a brain. She’ll be fine. I mean it,’ he added, seeing my face sour and chin drop. ‘She’ll be fine.

  ‘You’ve got hot baths and hot food coming, boys,’ H said to the other men about me, and I followed his gesture to where the stone walls of the fort of Vetera loomed ahead, the powerful bastion overlooking lands that were now unquestionably under the power of the tribes and their leader Arminius. We had slipped from the German’s grasp, but the man I had once called a friend was victorious – all Roman presence east of the Rhine had been wiped away, and Arminius sat atop a powerful army that had tasted victory.

  ‘They won’t stop at Aliso,’ I said.

  H shook his head. ‘They’ll have no choice, Felix. The commander of the lower Rhine has brought the First and the Fifth legions up here.’

  I felt his confidence, but believed none of it. ‘Arminius killed three legions in the forest.’

  ‘In the forest, yes,’ H agreed, with a slow nod of his head. ‘And he defeated three legions, but he won’t beat five.’

  ‘Five?’ I asked, puzzled. There were only two on the Rhine. Varus had led the other three to ruin, and for a moment, I thought that fatigue had robbed H of his memory.

  But I was wrong and, as we marched into Vetera, the centurion gave me my answer – it turned my guts to the same stone as the gatehouse above me.

  ‘The war in Pannonia’s finally put down!’ The Roman smiled. ‘The last of them have surrendered, Felix, so Tiberius is leading his legions to us!’

  My step faltered. The Pannonian legions, coming here?

  ‘Are you all right, Felix?’ H asked, concerned because he was seeing a ghost, now – white-skinned, my breath held in unmoving lungs.

  ‘Which legions?’ I finally choked.

  He told me with glee.

  I heard only one.

  The legion I had betrayed. The comrades I had abandoned.

  The Eighth.

  H beamed. ‘They’re coming here!’

  My throat was lead, my stomach ice. The eagle I had once carried for Rome was now marching to the Rhine to bring vengeance against the turncoat Arminius, but my former legion would find another traitor in their path. A traitor they despised more than any other.

  Corvus.

  ‘Felix, are you all right?’ H was worried. ‘What’s wrong with you?’

  At first I said nothing, but then I laughed at the sky, bitter and angry.

  ‘You’re wrong,’ I told him. ‘You’re wrong, H!’

  And so he was.

  All the miles, all the fights, all the pain – I had thought it was carrying me away from a treasonous life. From a poisonous war that H thought was over. But the Eighth Legion now marched towards me and the treasured beginnings of a new life I had found amongst comrades.

  They would not take it from me. I would not run again from what had started on bloody mountains a continent away – mountainsides where my friends had fought and died. Where Marcus had slipped away in my arms.

  It would not be forgotten. Not one misdeed. Not one death. Blood would pay for blood.

  ‘You’re wrong,’ I said again.

  Because the war in Pannonia was not over.

  Corvus was alive, and I wanted vengeance.

  Author’s Note

  A quick note on the map – Pannonia and Dalmatia weren’t established as separate provinces until after the events in this book, but I’ve used them for simplicity’s sake throughout this series.

  Following the destruction of three legions in the Teutoburg Forest, Arminius set about wiping out what was left of the Roman presence east of the river Rhine. In the classical texts of Velleius Paterculus and Cassius Dio, both men wrote that the revolting tribes were able to overrun the Roman forts on the Lippe one by one, often taking them by surprise. This run came to an end at the Fort of Aliso, which was under the command of Prefect Caedicius. Caedicius’s men supposedly inflicted a terrible toll on the enemy forces during the German’s assault, in large part thanks to the presence of archers on the walls.

  The fort then held out for several weeks, and in this time a number of frustrated tribes began to leave the battlefield. Arminius decided that starving the garrison was now his best course, and to this end he left a force between Aliso and the Rhine to block the Romans’ way to safety, while he himself left the site to shore up support for his war against Rome.

  Aliso’s commander Caedicius did not expect that a rescue would come from across the Rhine, or that the garrison would survive winter, and so the prefect planned to break out of the siege. Following reconnaissance by his scouts – who made note of the German dispositions and routines – the Romans waited for their chance to slip away. This eventually came under the cover of a heavy storm. According to Dio, the fort’s occupants succeeded in making it past the enemy’s first and second outposts before they were discovered by the tribesmen. As I have written it, this detection was supposedly caused by the panicked shouting of civilians as they failed to keep up with the vanguard. Dio says that, surrounded and attacked on all sides, Prefect Caedicius ordered that the civilians should abandon their possessions. When they did so, the Germans became distracted enough by this loot that the Roman force was able to cut its way clear. Dio goes on to say that the garrison in the fort of Vetera – modern day Xanten – learned of what was happening to the east, and sent units across the Rhine to see Aliso’s refugees safely home.

  Personally, I believe that there must have been some early co-ordination in this. The flight from Aliso took place at night and under heavy storm, and so I have to think that the soldiers on the Rhine would have been at least warned of such a breakout attempt, and stood ready to support it. Given the conditions, and that it took place on the opposite side of the Rhine by some miles, it’s hard to think that the garrison at Vetera only became aware of the breakout by chance.

  On the subject of distances from the Rhine, there is some debate as to the exact location of Aliso, but Haltern looks like a good bet. For the purposes of this book, I didn’t see anything to be gained by nailing my colours to the wall as far as an exact site went. I write stories rather than lessons, and so in this book I have simplified when it suited, exaggerated when it suited, and flat out invented when it suited – there’s nothing in the classical texts about murders in the Fort of Aliso. That’s all from my deranged little mind, and I implore readers to remember that books like this are fiction, and should not be swallowed whole as historical record. There are plenty of excellent non-fiction works about the Roman Army – too many for me to list, in fact. If you’d like to know more about the ones that I use when writing, please feel free to ask me online.

  I’ve used ‘supposedly’ a couple of times in this note, and for what I believe is good reason. We only have a couple of primary sources to draw upon when it comes to the siege of Aliso, and even these tend to be written decades or more after the date of events. If you want to hear an unbiased opinion about military campaigns in 2018, then I don’t think that taking news from a single media outlet is a good idea, and I’m sure that this would have applied a couple of thousand years ago, too. Just because there is a surviving record doesn’t make it fact, or even accurate. I’m sure the capacity to bullshit and twist the truth was as alive then as it
is now.

  The great thing about writing historical fiction is that you get to interpret what we do have – and fill in the blanks of what we don’t – with your own mind. I’m sure that there are plenty of other minds that would fill them in differently to how I do, but great! That’s what makes things interesting.

  Micon, Stumps, Titus, and the rest of Felix’s cronies are all fictional characters, but each are rooted in the personalities of soldiers that I was privileged to serve and fight alongside. Nothing gives me more pleasure than to talk with veterans, or to read the accounts that they have left behind, and I am convinced that the spirit and the nature of ‘the soldier’ transcends time. Regardless of the uniform, regardless of the weapons, there is a commonality to the men and women that bear arms and kill.

  And killing is something that Felix wished he had seen an end of, but with Arminius and his army undefeated, and with the vengeful legion that he deserted marching towards him, there’s still a lot more blood to shed.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to Rowland White, Jillian Taylor, Sharan Matharu, the Michael Joseph team at large, and to everyone at Penguin who made Siege possible; from drawing up contracts to distributing copies, there are so many people involved in the process and I’m grateful to every single one of you.

  Bear hugs to my agents Rowan, Rory, and to the extended family at Furniss Lawton. Lots of love to my flesh and blood in Wales. I wouldn’t be able to do what I do without the help of all of you, and I rather like what I’m doing, so cheers!

  Finally, thank you to all of the historians and archaeologists out there. Any book like this would be impossible without you.

  THE BEGINNING

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