That alone was worrying.
But there were more worrying things yet to come. As they passed the end of the circus and moved towards the area of warehouses and sub-urban estates, Rufinus’ heart sank. There was a glow hanging over the region ahead, and it was not the muted golden glow of torches or lamps. This was the glow of fire. Above, in the dark sky, roiling clouds of black.
Damn it. When would people stop being so stupid? If you’re starving and you want the grain distributed from the warehouse, what good does it do anyone to set fire to the damn place? People were such idiots.
Praying that the other centuries had travelled fast enough to already be moving into place, he gave the order for double time. Several more spots of rain dinged from his helmet. Would it be enough? In the best of worlds the rain would hold off until they arrived, and then come down like a breaking dam. Then it would be in time to help with rioting and fire, but too late make the stone underfoot slippery for hobnailed boots as they ran.
They passed the barracks of the Fourth Cohort of vigiles, and he was satisfied to note that it seemed to be all-but silent and empty, just a couple of guards left in the place. That meant that the vigiles were out in force, probably all at the nearby scene. Turning at the vigiles’ station, they ran on up the Clivus Triarius and now Rufinus received his first view of the trouble.
When they had delivered the first shipments of grain here – that day Rufinus had narrowly avoided a riot – he had seen the large, three-storey storehouse and assumed that was all there was. Subsequent visits had revealed more. The Horrea Ummidiana in fact consisted of three similar complexes, close together with only narrow streets between. An open space stood before the gate of the nearest, where they had stopped their wagons that day, and there was a second square to the south, beside the other two buildings. A boiling black cloud hung over the furthest warehouse, and Rufinus could see the red-gold sparks flitting up into the night over that third structure. While the sight of a burning building put the fear of the gods into him, at least it was the third granary, which was the emptiest of the three.
The nearest square was thronged with people, the noise so loud that it drowned out even the roar of the fire beyond. There was no central focus to the mob, though, which was good. Instead of a rhythmic chant, there was simply a cacophony of conflicting shouts and for that Rufinus gave silent thanks. An unruly mob was a hard enough thing to have to deal with, but if they were organised and purposeful, it could be so much worse.
Still, this was an entirely different situation to that day they had arrived with the grain. That had been an uneasy and discontented crowd. This was already an angry mob. Then he had been able to single out figures who would help convince the crowd. Here there would be no sympathetic voice to join them.
There was, in short, no hope of talking this lot down. The Cohort would have to commit to action, and would have to do it quickly, for if this mob suddenly found the focus they were missing, with one or more leaders making the decisions, then they would change from being an angry crowd into being almost an army.
Reaching down, Rufinus pulled his centurion’s whistle out from beneath his scarf and placed it between his lips. For a horrible moment he couldn’t remember the call, but years of memory tests that had kept him occupied when bored allowed him to run through the list in the blink of an eye and lock on to the one he needed.
One short blast: Attention
One long blast: Stand down
Two short blasts: Deploy in standard formation
Two long blasts: Pull back
Three short blasts: Line and brace
And then there was the one he needed. Three short blasts and one long. Engage the crowd with minimum force.
Blowing that signal, Rufinus prepared himself. As his men brought their shields up defensively in front of them and hefted their nightsticks ready to use, Rufinus drew his stout ash stick with his left hand and gripped his centurion’s vine stick in the right. No body shield to protect him. He would just have to be careful. And lucky.
He could hear his fellow centurion behind him echoing the call, and the two centuries fell into formation, filling the street from wall to wall, ten lines deep.
‘As we move into the square,’ he bellowed at the top of his voice to rise above the din, ‘widen the line to fill the space, drawing from the rear ranks.’
Moments later the men performed the manoeuvre admirably as the street opened out into the square containing the crowd. A front of fifteen men became twenty and then twenty five and then thirty. He could hear the distant sounds of other whistle calls ahead now, which came as a great relief. That meant that at least one of the other centuries had come round to the side of the mob or behind them. He glanced over his shoulder. A short distance back he could see the Sixth Century, hurrying to catch up having stopped in at the vigiles barracks and borrowed extra equipment to help with the fire. He turned to his left.
‘Force the left side forward hard. We need to break the crowd there so the Sixth can get to the fire to help. Now engage.’
He hated it. He hated every word of a command that set his men in conflict with the ordinary citizens of Rome, but he had been right to do so and he knew it. Even as his men pressed silently and fiercely forward the first missiles started to clatter and thud against their shields. And these were not cabbages and fruit. These were chunks of brick, pieces of timber, carcasses of rats and various animals that had died in the street, and various other pieces of debris. Rufinus felt something solid yet wet hit his shoulder and ricochet off into the men behind and tried not to wonder with horror what it was.
Then they were in.
The crowd met them with the violence of a Germanic tribe, swiping, thumping, kicking and roaring unintelligible imprecations. All along the line, the men of Rufinus’ centuries pushed, bracing themselves and heaving with their heavy shields. Minimum force, the command had been, and so the men tried not to actively strike out at the people at first. Instead they pushed and heaved, forcing the public back in an attempt to make a way through for their compatriots to reach the fire. And when they met too solid a resistance and there seemed no hope of pushing further, the well-practiced men of the Cohort simply pulled their shields back a little, allowing the crowd to stumble forward, and then smashed the heavy, curved boards against them once more. Then, the iron bosses at the centre started to break bones and cause pain, and with each fresh push the men heaved the crowd back a little.
Rufinus parried flailing sticks with his own and twice lashed out, catching the side of one man’s head and the weapon-arm of another, narrowly avoiding going down to a blow from the crowd.
He had to judge this right. Timing was all. One wrong choice and they would end up either at war and killing citizens, which was to be avoided at all costs, or being forced to capture, bind and arrest the entire crowd, which would be near impossible. No, what he needed to do was disperse them, but they were still too angry. They needed to break. They needed to realise how hopeless it all was.
Bellowing encouragement to his men, he twisted slightly and slammed his armoured shoulder into a thick-set man waving a skillet. The big fellow fell back into the crowd with a cry, but the Cohort were pushing them hard enough that the crowd was compressing tighter and tighter, and there simply wasn’t space for the man to fall, so he found himself bounced around and constricted, crushed between his angry fellows.
Rufinus couldn’t estimate casualties since he was as tightly-packed in the press as any of them, but he’d seen a few of his men cry out and fall to be dragged back by their friends into the rear of the century and replaced instantly by a fresh face. Irritatingly, they would be taking more casualties than the mob, but that was in the very nature of ‘minimal force’.
The lot of the soldiers was improving now, though. With the ever increasing press of the tightening, constricting crowd, fewer and fewer citizens were finding that they had adequate room to lash out at the soldiers heaving them back with painful shields. M
oreover, most had run out of missiles to throw, and those that still had them couldn’t find an easy target now in the press.
The mood was changing. He could feel it. There was still anger, but the aura of the crowd was losing its violent edge. What had moments earlier been the brutal urge to harm soldiers was gradually dissolving into despair and panic. Still angry, but also desperate and futile.
Soon…
He could hear the calls of other centuries now. He couldn’t see any of them, but they were close enough to hear, and that meant the crowd had been contained. They were being pressed tight. The mood was almost right.
Something struck Rufinus in the knee and he yelped, reeling and almost falling, but like the civilians, the soldiers were equally tightly-packed and there was nowhere for him to fall. Pain wracked his left knee and as he put his weight on it once more, it screamed at him. He staggered and someone hit him on the helmet. The bulk of the damage was prevented by the heavy iron, but the ringing in his ears was intense, his skull flashed with pain, and for a moment his eyes blurred.
‘Sticks,’ he bellowed. He hadn’t wanted to, but the crowd was almost there, and Rufinus risked collapsing beneath them. If only he could nudge them over the lip from anger into panic.
The men began to jab and swipe with their nightsticks now, having previously been remarkably restrained. Men and women howled as they took painful blows from the heavy cudgels of the soldiers. Rufinus shook his head and almost fell, wobbly knee shaking beneath him. He felt the change in an instant. The will of the mob to fight on drained shockingly fast. Gritting his teeth, Rufinus took a deep breath.
‘Sticks up. Break left and clear the road.’
These men were professionals, trained in such manoeuvers, and yet Rufinus was still impressed with the speed and efficiency of his men as they carried out his orders. In an instant they stopped striking the howling rioters and the entire line of men opened up like a gate, swinging back and left until instead of filling the street, they were lined up along the side, and the mob had a route to freedom.
Panic was flooding through the mob now, and they needed no encouragement. Even as the soldiers were moving aside already the crowd were running, limping, hobbling and crawling away, the mob surging into the open city where they split off and melted into any available side street, desperate to do nothing more than get away from the soldiers and home safe.
As the crowd drained like a pond through a sluice gate, so Rufinus bellowed more orders. His men, who had been pressing hardest at the left since the start, now began to push once more, opening up a path through which the Sixth Century ran, hurrying to help the vigiles with the blaze. As the square emptied, Rufinus heaved a sigh of relief and, lowering his vitis, used it as a walking stick alongside his weak left leg. He took a couple more faltering steps on it. It hurt like Hades, but wasn’t broken. He was content that it would recover in time. He limped forward, taking in the scene.
Perhaps a dozen civilian corpses lay unmoving in the square. He viewed them with pity and regret, but neither shame nor guilt. They were back where the press of the crowd had been, not at the edge where they had engaged the Cohort. Unless he missed his guess, his soldiers had managed to cause no fatalities, and these bodies had all fallen amid their own fellow rioters. Of course, one might suggest that the Cohort pushing the crowd into that tight press had caused it in the first place, but the fact remained that they were unfortunate casualties of the situation, and not victims of the soldiers’ aggression.
Flames were still rising from the third granary, and it might not be salvageable, but the vigiles had concentrated primarily on soaking the walls and shutters of the adjacent buildings, and tearing down and removing anything flammable nearby, limiting the growth of the conflagration and preventing it from burning the other two granaries with their precious contents.
The men of the Sixth were now at the disaster scene, lending a hand where they could, taking directions from the officers of the vigiles who were already smoke-blackened and tired.
‘You alright sir?’
He turned to see his optio, Sura, looking meaningfully at how Rufinus leaned on his vitis for support.
‘Some bastard kicked me in the knee, but I’ll recover. To be honest it’s the headache that’s threatening to do for me.’
Sura nodded seriously. ‘Some bugger hit you hard, sir. It’s left a dent.’
Rufinus made to argue and resist, but swiftly gave up as the optio unfastened his centurion’s helmet and carefully lifted it off him. Rufinus immediately felt the blood that had been contained by the wool liner trickle down his scalp and into his ear.
‘Gods, that hurts.’
Sura nodded again. ‘When we get back you need to have the medicus stitch that, sir.’
Rufinus sighed. ‘In the meantime, let’s finish up here. Have two centuries create a cordon in every street at a distance of a thousand paces from the fire. Let’s make sure the roads are clear. Every other man present can lend their support to the vigiles. Let’s see if we can save what’s left of that building.’
Sura saluted and hurried off to give the orders, but something else attracted Rufinus’ attention and his gaze rose past the optio and the men who were beginning to move out to create the cordon. It fell upon a small mounted party, and his already low spirits plunged into subterranean depths.
Pertinax rode his brown mare with only two guards and a slave tramping alongside, but the Urban Prefect was far from alone. Beside him, Cleander rode a white horse with a dozen Praetorian cavalrymen gathered around, including the familiar and extremely unwelcome figure of Appius Fulvius.
‘Oh just fucking wonderful,’ he grumbled as he tried to pull himself into a rough approximation of attention, which his knee seemed determined to prevent. He swayed and almost fell, but managed to remain upright and leaned heavily on the stick for support.
‘Centurion,’ Pertinax greeted him with an incline of the head. Rufinus saluted.
‘Prefect. I am pleased to report that the situation is under control.’
Pertinax opened his mouth to reply but Cleander, leaning forward in his saddle, fixed Rufinus with a glare and spoke first.
‘This is under control?’
‘We have dispersed a rioting mob of more than a thousand citizens with minimal casualties all round and little damage to the surroundings. It could have been a great deal worse, sir.’
Cleander snarled. ‘This is damn disgrace, Centurion. A granary on fire is not “little damage”, and where are your prisoners? Where are those responsible? Examples should be made.’
Rufinus could see Pertinax shaking his head slightly, willing Rufinus to be meek and accepting, but his knee hurt, his head hurt, his ear was filled with blood, and the chamberlain was talking out of his backside. And on top of it all, the rain was starting properly, just when he no longer really needed it. Rufinus was in no mood to take shit from anyone right now.
‘Thanks to the solid efforts of the local vigiles, supported by my own men, a fire that had begun before we were summoned to the scene has been contained and prevented from spreading to other buildings. The granary that caught light is, thankfully, almost empty, the bulk of what we are hoarding stored in the nearest one. Very little real damage has been done. I could not arrest ringleaders, because there were none. This was not an organised attack, but an angry mob. Every man and woman present was responsible. Would you crucify a thousand citizens? Would that really help? Would that make the people of Rome calmer and more accepting? And given the situation, Chamberlain, I thought it considerably more important to disperse the crowd and concentrate on containing the fire, which we have done.’
Pertinax nodded slowly, though he wore a pained expression. He agreed, but aggravating Cleander could cause a great deal of trouble.
The chamberlain paused for a moment, wishing to dispute everything that Rufinus reported, angry at being gainsaid and spoken to thus, but also aware that in truth, the centurion with the shaking leg and the bleed
ing scalp was quite correct. Angrily, Cleander turned on Pertinax.
‘This was a mess. Your men need to be on situations like this much faster. They need to be breaking up gangs of protesters before they can put flint and tinder to my granaries.’
Rufinus winced. Cleander had just claimed ownership of the granaries in front of perhaps three dozen men of different units, all of whom would have heard him. That comment would be trotted out more than once in soldier’s bars over the next twenty four hours, and Cleander’s anger at having his granaries attacked would be the talk of the forum by tomorrow afternoon. The chamberlain was beginning to condemn himself.
‘Chamberlain,’ Pertinax said patiently, ‘the moment the alarm was raised, the Cohort fell in and ran to the scene. If you look over there, I think you’ll probably realise that the quick-thinking centurion here even requisitioned a few hundred of your Praetorians’ horses to get to the scene fast.’
Cleander’s gaze flashed back and his face fought between fury and embarrassment. He would hate that the Urban Cohort had borrowed his horses, but he could hardly argue having just told them they needed to be faster.
‘And when you’re on the scene,’ Cleander snapped irritably, ‘you need to resolve it faster. Stop trying to mollycoddle the public. Bear blades if you have to, but stop messing about and use sufficient force to put the riot down swiftly.’
‘It is the remit of the Cohort,’ Pertinax responded, still calm, ‘to use the minimum force necessary in all situations. We are, after all, formed for the protection and benefit of the citizens of Rome, not to be their attackers and jailors.’
He had the chamberlain, and they all knew it. Pertinax was only stating the purpose of the Cohort, and it supported the actions they had taken perfectly.
‘I don’t give a shit what it says on the wall of your office, Pertinax. What I want is order and security in Rome. That is your purpose, and you are failing to achieve it. If you cannot react swifter and more decisively, then I will be forced to consider deploying the Praetorian Guard in your place. They will not baulk at doing whatever is required to keep the peace. It will look very poor for your future career, Prefect, if the Guard are called out to do your job for you.’
Lions of Rome Page 30