by Dan Wallace
He compressed his lips.
“Shafat, send for Quarto.”
The Etrurian first seemed surprised, then left the tent. In short order, he returned with the tall veteran.
“Quarto, sit with us, have a glass of wine.”
“I don’t drink, sir. Not for years.”
“No wonder you were able to keep a farm,” said Ulpius, and the others laughed out loud.
“You’re right, brother,” said Quarto. “I knew that if I didn’t quit, I’d be gone long before now. But who’s to know what the better life is now?”
“Salvete,” the men said, lifting their cups in a common salute, then drinking.
“Quarto, you tell me there are a thousand dispossessed people out there, good citizens and subjects of Rome.”
Quarto lowered his head in assent.
“The great number of them are women and children, no?”
“Yes, Quaestor, roughly.”
Tiberius acknowledged Quarto with a nod, then paused for a moment, as if ruminating.
“That means that three hundred or so of these displaced are men, correct?”
“Yessir.”
Tiberius leaned in, “Are any of them veterans?”
Quarto’s head moved back. Then, he smiled. “Almost to the man, Quaestor.”
“Three hundred veterans. Soldiers of Rome missio.”
“Hungry, but handy with shield and sword, Quaestor.”
The other centurions looked back and forth at each other after every exchange, their mouths open in surprise.
“I imagine so, Centurion Primus.” Tiberius sat back. “So, do you think these men would consider becoming evocati?”
Quarto grinned, a stunning change to his demeanor since they’d met him twelve hours before. “I do believe they’d dance at the chance, Quaestor. Most of them still have their gear, too. That’s the last to go when you’re on the road with your family.”
“Interesting, Centurion.”
“That does bring up a thorny one, sir. None of them are likely to leave their women and kids in the lurch. A few maybe, but those are men you don’t want. The rest, they’ll stay and starve with their kin first.”
“Yes, of course,” Tiberius said quietly. “One more question, Quarto. Are there others like you on the vias?”
Quarto spit an explosive laugh. “More like us? There are so many, they call us the pedites. There are thousands more like us, Quaestor. This royal robbery of people’s land has been going on since the Macedonian Wars. I was a donkey to think I could keep my little plot by myself. There are pedites on every road in Italia looking for handouts, stealing what they can when they can, dying if they don’t. Many go to Rome to try their luck there. But the citizen-soldier farmer of Rome has become like a shade in Hades.”
“Pedites. Very well, thank you Quarto. You can return to your fire.”
Quarto snapped to attention and saluted Tiberius smartly, his fist cracking across his breast. Tiberius saluted him with the same formality. Quarto reversed and marched out of the tent.
Except for Casca, the centurions stepped all over themselves crying out their objections. Sextus sat in his chair quietly, almost bemused as he heard them shouting.
“They have no land, they cannot serve in the army!”
“The gods will punish us!”
“The senators will banish us!”
“All right, all right,” Tiberius said loudly, “stand to!”
The men quieted at once, though they all looked truly shaken, except for Casca.
“What else can we do?” Tiberius asked. “We have barely a century and a half of recruits who will desert the first chance they get. And we are looking at a thousand Roman citizens and allies expiring within our sight for lack of food and shelter. Families of retired veterans from Rome’s greatest legions, starving right before our eyes! I have never seen anything like this before, ever, and I cannot let it happen right in front of me. I must do something.”
Didius spoke. “We cannot save them all, Quaestor, and we will be condemned if we try to enlist men who do not own land!”
“They owned land, Didius, and lost it. Unlike you and your fellow centurions here,” Tiberius looked around the tent, “their land was stolen from them. Under those circumstances,” and he slowed, faltering a bit, “we can enlist them as evocati. When we have defeated the Numantines, they will be landed again, as is the case with all honored veterans.”
“Oh, what senator will accept that?” said Didius despairingly, “and who will champion that argument for us? We could be decimated!”
“My father-in-law will champion the argument, Didius,” Tiberius said, “and so will Rome’s consul, Gaius Hostilius Mancinus. If we arrive in Hispania with a legion solid with trained veterans, Mancinus won’t say one word about their pedigrees. He will welcome them with open arms.”
The centurions looked doubtful and glum, all except Casca, who kept his opinion hidden behind a stone face.
“Centurions, this is my decision. We will enlist the men available here at the Vulsinii Lake, and we will comb the Via Cassia for more ‘pedite’ veterans until we have a full legion for Hispania.”
They still appeared skeptical, which made Tiberius unsure. He breathed out and said. “Now, I know this seems unconventional, but we will sacrifice to all of the gods that could possibly care for our success. I know that good soldiers that you are, you will follow orders as best you can. But true success can only be achieved if you believe in your commander’s vision, and I ask you for that conviction. Do I have it?” he asked. “Do I?”
Sextus raised his arm languidly and said, “You have my vote.”
Didius grimaced but said nothing. Finally, he arose and saluted Tiberius as stiffly as Quarto. Ulpius stood and saluted in the same fashion, and Shafat followed suit. When they had finished, Casca performed a slow, elegant salute to Tiberius, “Hail, Quaestor Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus.”
“Hail!” the others shouted.
Eyes darting, Tiberius smiled confidently and dismissed them to their quarters. As Casca was leaving, however, Tiberius told him to wait. Sextus remained seated, having made no move to leave with the others.
Tiberius gestured to the field table in the tent, and Casca sat down. Tiberius glanced at Lysis, who hurried away. Tiberius sat down between the two men.
Lysis returned with a pitcher of wine and three cups, which he laid out on the table. He poured the cups half full of wine. He looked at Tiberius questioningly, who waved his hand to continue, then filled the cups to the brim. Tiberius signaled to Casca and Sextus to pick up their cups while he raised his own. The men each took long sips and put their cups down. Tiberius looked at Sextus, who hesitated only for a second, then said blithely, “They are right, of course. If you do this, you’ll bring the Senate down on your neck.”
Tiberius turned to Casca. The primus flashed his teeth in a pained expression, moving his head back and forth as if debating within himself. Finally, he picked up his cup while saying, “You are right, Quaestor, this appears to be the only way to fill out the legion. But the boys are right,” he said, then tossed his head at Sextus, “the eques, too. The Senate will hound you for this.”
“I expect so,” Tiberius said, “but they won’t get far. Those men out there are evocati, for the love of Venus. Whether they gambled their land away and had to re-up, or they were robbed by a bunch of patrician thieves, they are honored veterans who will hump their campaign gear again to help us punish the Numantines. Who will argue with that? The fat cats sitting on the ager publica? Not likely.”
Casca, pulling on his chin, said “True enough.”
Sextus simply opened his mouth in a wordless smile.
“Even if they do object,” Tiberius said in a bitter tone, “I’m not going to let these men starve. They’re better off taking their chances in Numantia than slowly dying next to a lake where they’re not allowed to fish.”
“Yes,” said Sextus, “but what about the women and th
eir brats? The men will feed while their families perish? Most of them won’t have that.”
Tiberius grimaced. “I won’t have it either.”
He stood up and began pacing back and forth in the tent. Then, he spun around to face the other two. “We’ll feed them. We’ll give them enough to survive through the campaign season. If we don’t return, we’ll have Quarto tell them to go to Rome for the winter. That’s the best we can do, but it’s better than starving right here, right now.”
“True again,” Sextus said. “But where are we going to get the provisions? We’re almost out ourselves just by feeding them once today. Where will we find enough to supply them and the legion for six months?”
Tiberius rubbed his mouth with his hand. “There is a place.”
Rufus rode slowly between his men back to his villa, glumly thinking about Scipio’s response to his concern. “Gracchus is following consular orders, you can’t fault him for that.”
Following consular orders, following all his orders, Rufus moped, such as traipsing about in the brush and the woods, disrupting honest stewards of the land. If he has been charged with finding recruits, why doesn’t he stick to the roads like all good tribunes in the past? And, of course Scipio would side with his brother-in-law, the politics of the marital bed. Rufus shook his head, I had thought Scipio to be more constant and fairer. Not so, apparently.
His bitter reverie was interrupted by a tumult taking place in front of him. He could see dust rising above his vanguard, and he shivered, What? Brigands?
The row of horsemen split, and Rufus watched as Maro, his headman came running through, filthy-looking, and exhausted.
“Maro, what is this? Stop and stay where you are.”
“Master, they came back! They sacked the storage barns!”
“They came back? Who came back?” As the rest of Maro’s statement dawned on him, he shrieked, “Sacked! Sacked my storage barns! By the gods, Polemo! Draw your sword! They’ve sacked my storage barns.”
Polemo, the greying, white-scarred Anatolian captain of Rufus’s guard called down to Maro in a rough, Eastern accent, “Who sacked the barns?”
“Tiberius Gracchus!” cried out Maro, “Mancinus’s quaestor came back to take everything!”
Rufus shouted, “Call the rest of the guards, Polemo, and track them down. Bring me back my bounty!”
“Master, we can’t,” said Polemo. “We can’t. Quaestor Gracchus claimed the goods by order of procurement. Even if law is not on his side, he’s 600, we are sixty.”
“More, Master,” Maro cried, “he must have had a thousand men at arms.”
Rufus’s face turned wine red. He stood on the carriage to beat the front bulwark with his fists. “Dis Pater and all of the gods of death and destruction, I will have you flogged and crucified if you don’t go at once to bring back what belongs to me!”
Polemo sat back in his saddle and said, “Master Rufus, I serve you and would be ruined to lose your work. And, you might win to have me flogged and crucified later some time. But I promise you, if I try to stop Gracchus now, he will flog and crucify me in no time, no question.”
Another rider loped up to stop next to Polemo, and began speaking to him in some Anatolian language, complete gibberish as far as Rufus was concerned. Palermo turned to him and said, “Gracchus was generous. He only took a quarter of the goods.”
Rufus exhaled some relief, though he was still outraged. “He’s a sly fox, that Gracchus. No doubt, he’s done the same to every legitimate estate owner up and down the vias. I can’t very well lodge a complaint against his pillage if he’s assumed a mantle of equanimity. I wonder if his even-handed pillaging extended to his dear brother-in-law.”
The pudgy senator churned his features in a remarkable display of displeasure and anger. Finally, he said, “All right, on to the house. Maro, I want a complete inventory of what was taken. Be thorough, Maro, or it will be your hide. Someday the haughty quaestor will pay for this robbery and affront, sesterce by sesterce.”
Maro dashed off down the road as the troop of guards flanked the carriage again on its slow way to the villa. Rufus sat silently, deep in his thoughts of revenge. Polemo led the way, warily self-satisfied that he hadn’t told Rufus everything reported to him by his scout in their native tongue. The little master would have burst like an overripe tomato if he’d learned that Gracchus planned to distribute the confiscated goods to Pedites clogging the roads. Wasted on pink-skinned vermin, the little master would say. Yes, nodded Polemo to himself, better little master finds out when his captain of the guards is away on patrol.
Chapter 9. The Poet Seers
Smoke curled from the large, two-story stone house, blending with the cold, grey river of clouds that filled the sky above. Avarus stood some distance from the building, his beige linen shirt peeled down to his waist so that he could splash water on himself from the big, iron bowl set on the firewood stump. The water was freezing, and he wished he could be inside, next to the fire while he waited for his wife Sicounin to serve him breakfast. Maybe she’d serve him some hot, thick bread with a good number of pine nuts, perhaps even an egg and salted pork, a cup of watered wine to wash it all down. Or dried fruit, the dates from that Roman trader, perhaps, mixed with a good, grain porridge. As he rubbed his round belly, the grey hairs twined in a wet ridge down the middle, he ruefully thought maybe just thick bread and hot water for a while, until this went down.
He scratched the place where his belly button was supposed to be, replaced by the scar from the sword slash he’d taken during the war against Nobilor. So long ago, it seemed. The Numantines were ready to protect their homes as were their allies the Segedans, who had come to Numantia seeking refuge from the Roman invaders. The people had been solemn, hiding their fear of the six Roman legions encamped at their city doors. Things couldn’t have looked worse when the famed soldiers approached with three elephants in their center, elephants! The city’s women and children began to cry when they heard about the destructive monsters. Then, Megaravicus ordered flaming arrows to be shot at the elephants’ eyes, which terrified them. The massive brutes turned and ran. When their handlers tried to stop them and point them again toward the city walls, the beasts crushed them with their heavy feet, or grabbed them with their trunks and tossed them. The legions panicked and fled the walls. Without hesitation, Megaravicus rallied the Numantines and the Segedans, and called for other strongholds of the Arevaci to join them in routing the Roman horde. Six thousand legionaries were killed, including the one who stabbed at an over-exuberant, young Avarus rushing in to extinguish personally the Roman might. The point of the legionary’s short sword opened him up and would have been fatal had Avarus not jumped back just in time while swinging his own spina to split the head of his unlucky foe. Avarus collapsed and waited for six hours until his father found him, curled like a baby and holding the wound together with his hands.
They burned the center of the puckering wound with an iron poker, causing him to scream like a dying horse. Then, while he whimpered, his father sewed him up with leather sinew. As his father pulled the leather through, he told his son that every stitch was a painful warning to be cautious in war, to wait for the right moment before committing everything. Wait, because everything meant his life, the lives of his family, and those of all the Numantines and the other Arevaci peoples.
The wound festered, requiring his father to reopen it to clean out the green seepage, and cauterize it again, more excruciating pain, more stitches. Avarus had finally healed, but scar tissue had grown over his navel, as though he had never been born of humans. His star had risen because of the weirdness and his bravery, until ultimately a high priestess blessed him as a poet-seer. Now, along with Rhetogenes, he was second only to Megaravicus, the high chieftain of the Numantine Druid warrior priests. In time, he also learned to plan and negotiate rather than rush into battle.
So long ago, thought Avarus, sixteen years. He was middle-aged, his father was gone, as were his first t
wo wives, Stena in childbirth, and Ana from a chill. Sicounin was hale, though, had borne three children of her own, and seemed to have no problem handling Stena’s stout sons. Fine warriors in the making, they were, but no match for Sicounin, mostly because they worshiped her. In the meantime, she was making him fat, but how could he complain about that?
He pulled up his shirt over his arms and shoulders just as Sicounin stepped out of the house with a cup of broth. Avarus reached for it and drank, throwing his head back.
Sicounin, a comely, golden-haired woman of thirty years, grabbed his arm, “It’s hot!”
“I’m cold,” said Avarus, then sputtered as the hot broth burned his tongue. “Curse the nether gods, woman, what are you trying to do, murder me?”
“I told you it was hot, you brainless goat!” she said, trying to disengage her hand from his arm. He snatched it quickly, and drew her to his chest, “Well, then, cool it down with water!”
“Oh, yes, then it will be too cold, you oaf!” She jerked away with the cup, but not before he swatted her on the backside. “I’ll take my chances.”
She huffed into the house in mock anger, and Avarus watched her with open affection as she disappeared.
“A handsome woman,” a deep voice sounded behind him, “and wise to be wary of your goatish nature.”
“Rhetogenes,” said Avarus as he wheeled around, “always a kind word. And what tears you away from the meseta, noble chieftain, run out of ewes of your own?”
Rhetogenes sat tall on a small horse so that his leather-wrapped feet almost touched the ground. He sat stooped over, leaning on his arms crossed over the neck of his steed as it nibbled at a lone patch of grass on the path’s edge. “There are women enough on the tablelands. No need to climb up to this lumpy pile of rocks.”
Avarus laughed, “Then, Long God of Love, why did you leave them?”
Rhetogenes pursed his lips sourly, “You know why.”
Avarus sighed, “Ah, yes, the Romans. I thought this peace might last.”