Fire and Sword

by Harry Sidebottom

  Would he were not alive, might he die among them, could but

  His spirit struggle free of this hated place!

  The sound of running feet thudding down the corridor.

  ‘The Goths! The Goths!’

  A slave burst into the room.

  ‘Master, the Goths are in the town.’

  Honoratus dropped the papyrus roll.

  ‘Bring me my boots.’

  As the slave crouched at his feet, busy with straps and buckles, Honoratus pulled on his sword-belt.

  ‘Your armour, master.’

  ‘No time.’

  Honoratus took the stairs two at a time.

  It could be a false alarm. Honoratus had served in enough armies to know that a loose mule, or a drunk overturning a lamp, could cause a panic in the dead of night.

  A motley crowd was assembled on the roof: some slaves, two marines, and, off to one side, the Gothic priest.

  The Gudja walked across. ‘I warned you, as the gods foretold, Cniva has come.’

  Honoratus did not reply.

  The slaves were wailing, imploring the intercession of their various deities.

  Honoratus looked out over the dark town. There were fires burning in the temple district. By their light mobs of men could be seen surging through the streets.

  ‘Soldier.’ Honoratus called one of the marines to his side. ‘The situation?’

  ‘The Goths must have got in over the northern wall. The guards may have been drunk with the festival.’

  Most likely the soldier was right. Somehow the Goths must have come down through the marshes of the Delta.

  Now the first torches were flaring close by on the Acropolis. A roaring sound drifted up, like standing on a headland and listening to a storm at sea. It was too late for resistance, the town was lost.

  ‘You two with me,’ Honoratus ordered the marines. ‘You as well,’ he said to the Gudja.

  The ships in the harbour at the south of the town offered the only hope. If they could get to the Providentia before she cast off …

  ‘Master, what about us?’

  ‘You slaves must see to your own safety.’

  Honoratus pounded back down the stairs, the three men at his back.

  Outside in the street civilians ran past, mad with fear.

  Honoratus set off for the harbour. Their footfalls echoed back from the blank walls. High above, the moon shone behind scudding clouds. Selene was motionless and serene, remote from human suffering.

  There was a tang of burning in the air. It caught in Honoratus’ throat, as his breathing became ragged. Not far now, not far.

  They ran around a corner, and the Goths were at the far end of the street, between them and the port.

  Seeing them, the Goths gave voice to a guttural hooming sound. The majority were intent on looting, only a few gave chase.

  Honoratus and his three companions turned, and fled.

  Back around the corner, there was a door to the right. It was closed. Honoratus tried to kick it open. The door jumped on its hinges, but did not give. The soldiers threw their shoulders against the boards, and the lock splintered.

  Down a black corridor, and out into the moonlit atrium.

  A slave ran past. Honoratus grabbed him by the front of his tunic.

  ‘The rear door?’

  The slave was incoherent with terror.

  ‘Take us to the backdoor.’

  The slave nodded, went to move away.

  Honoratus following, held him by the scruff of his neck.

  The warren of the slave quarters reeked of unwashed humanity and stale food.

  ‘Unbar the door.’

  The slave squirmed with indecision. ‘The master said to keep the doors shut.’

  Honoratus pushed the slave aside, yanked back the bolts himself.

  Another street, once again full of long-haired barbarians, of outlandish leather and furs.

  The rear door slammed shut and rebolted, Honoratus doubled up, panting. Zeus drew Hector out of the place where men were killed, the blood and confusion. There had to be a way out.

  ‘The south wall.’

  They doubled back through the cells of the servants, across the atrium, and barged and blundered through stately chambers. Vases of ancient Corinthian workmanship tottered and smashed in their wake.

  ‘Give me a leg up.’

  One soldier linked his hands as a stirrup, and the other boosted Honoratus onto the wall. The alleyway beyond was empty. He reached down, and hauled the marines up after him.

  The Gudja remained at the foot of the wall.

  ‘Leave the bastard, sir. He is one of them.’

  ‘No, we might need him.’

  They dragged the Gothic priest up with them.

  One by one, they dropped to the ground. As if by some unspoken command, all four men drew their swords.

  ‘Keep running.’

  Narrow lanes, twisting this way and that, muddy, choked with rubbish.

  Screams and shouts rang down the alleyways, like noises off stage in the theatre.

  Once Honoratus slipped and fell. He was up and running again in a moment; hands and knees skinned and smarting.

  Clouds sailing across the moon. They ran through darkness and light, like initiates in some crazed mystery cult.

  The harbour at last. A dense throng on the quayside. Men, women and children, all pushing and shoving, fighting to get to the remaining boats.

  The water glittering, placid in the moonlight beyond.

  ‘Make way for the governor! Make way!’

  No one heeded the shouts of the soldiers, and they used the flats of their swords on defenceless heads and shoulders and backs.

  Belabouring the civilians, they forced a passage to the lip of the dock.

  There was the Providentia, already twenty paces out, backing away. Figures in the water were floundering after the slowly departing vessel.

  Near at hand, Honoratus saw a fishing boat capsize under the weight of the people struggling to board.

  ‘We swim.’

  Honoratus dropped his blade, tore off his sword-belt.

  ‘I do not know how to swim.’ The Gudja stood still, a prophet deserted by his god.

  Honoratus kicked off his boots.

  ‘I do not swim.’

  Honoratus shoved the Gudja off the quayside. Limbs flailing, the Goth splashed down, and vanished beneath the surface.

  Honoratus dived. He landed poorly, his breath half knocked out. There were figures thrashing all around. No sign of the Goth. The two marines were ploughing off after the trireme.

  Like some aquatic beast from myth, the Gudja erupted from the deep, then sank again.

  Honoratus caught his bone-embroidered hair, went to pull the barbarian back up.

  The Gudja grabbed Honoratus around the neck.

  They sank, locked in a lashing, doomed embrace.

  To die like this, so near safety, drowned by a barbarian’s lack of self-control.

  They broke the surface.

  ‘Stop fighting!’

  Down they went again, deeper this time. Honoratus’ chest hurt. This time there would be no surfacing.

  Honoratus raked his fingernails down the barbarian’s face, hoping to catch an eye.

  The Gudja released him.

  Bobbing up to the surface, Honoratus sucked in air, and swam strongly away. The Providentia was thirty or more paces off. The trireme looked huge from this angle. She was turning, getting ready to depart. Honoratus did not look back.

  Strong in the water, Honoratus closed the distance before the great banks of oars got the warship under way.

  ‘Lend a hand for your governor!’ Honoratus yelled.

  He was closing with the stern, near the left-hand steering oar.

  ‘A hand for your governor!’

  A flash of movement in the darkness.

  ‘Wait!’ Someone was shouting.

  The boathook was the last thing Honoratus saw. It hit him square on the he
ad. As he sank, a line of poetry drifted through his thoughts. His spirit struggles free of this hated place.

  PART VII:

  RAVENNA AND AQUILEIA

  CHAPTER 25

  Ravenna, The Kalends of May, AD238

  Up on the tribunal the wind fretted at Pupienus’ purple cloak. Behind him it tugged at the assembled standards. It was a small price to pay. Ravenna was surrounded by marshes, ringed with lagoons. Without the ceaseless breeze, and the tides which washed the filth of the settlement down to the sea, Ravenna would be uninhabitable with fever.

  Waiting for the next unit to begin its demonstration, Pupienus looked beyond the parade ground, and let his gaze follow the line of poplars that fringed the canal which ran past the amphitheatre and back towards the walls of the town. It was a beautiful spring morning. In the sunshine the grass was very green, and the flowers in the fields a vibrant yellow. Yet there was always something ineffably melancholy about tall, dark poplars.

  The 4th Cohort Alpinorum Sagittarorum, four-hundred strong, marched out by Centuries in columns of five. They wheeled and counter-marched creditably, before coming to a halt before the tribunal.

  ‘Hail, Pupienus Augustus.’

  Pupienus gave the word of command, and they about-turned as one. The targets, nailed-together planks about the size and shape of a man, were a hundred and fifty paces distant.

  ‘Draw.’

  Left hands steady, right well back, eyes and minds concentrated, the archers bent their bows.

  ‘Loose.’

  The untipped practice shafts hissed away. Moments later they clattered against and around the targets.

  ‘Loose.’

  Four squalls of arrows darkened the sky in rapid succession.

  With advancing years, Pupienus’ eyesight was not what it had once been. Yet he had spent much of his earlier life in army camps, all those long years on the German frontier. He did not need perfect vision to tell that the grouping had been good.

  Pupienus had expected the proficiency of these auxiliary bowmen shipped across the Adriatic by Claudius Julianus, the governor of Dalmatia. The same had been true of the two units earlier in the day. Admittedly the thousand legionary veterans tempted by a large donative to come out of retirement and form a temporary Praetorian Cohort had moved rather slowly, but they had done their arms drill with the shrewdness of long experience. If they were not asked to march too far or too fast, the old soldiers had one more campaign in them. The three thousand marines and sailors seconded from the Ravenna fleet to serve on land had stepped out smartly, and wielded their wooden swords on the wicker shields and any exposed part of their companions’ anatomy with a will. The men of the fleet were always eager to dispel the disdain in which they were held by the rest of the army. After such expertise and enthusiasm, the formations that were to follow might seem less than acceptable.

  Pupienus had done what he could in a short space of time with unsatisfactory materials. He was not Prometheus, able to fashion men out of clay. The thousand gladiators in the imperial school here in Ravenna had been recruited. Levies had been conducted to conscript five thousand townsmen to the standards. In total he had cobbled together over ten thousand swords, approaching half of them real soldiers. Of course, it was not an army that could take the field, let alone challenge the forces of Maximinus in open battle. But, when Aquileia fell – he corrected himself, if Aquileia fell – it might be enough to hold Ravenna. The walls of the town were being repaired, and the endless waterways and swamps made it hard to approach.

  As the 4th Cohort moved off to take its place on the edge of the parade ground, Pupienus thought about Rome. Macrianus, the new commander of the frumentarii, kept Pupienus well informed about all that happened in the eternal city. The lame veteran had a talent for prying into the affairs of others; his spies were everywhere – eavesdropping and opening letters – and his reports detailed and prompt. Yet it had come as little surprise, and perhaps had needed no arcane knowledge to foretell, that Balbinus, within days of being left alone, had allowed the city to slide into an anarchy of riot and street fighting. After one ineffectual foray, the corpulent fool had abnegated all responsibility, and barricaded himself on the Palatine. Rufinianus, the Prefect of the City, had been no better.

  It had been left to Timesitheus to defend the Praetorian camp and end the violence. Somehow the little Greek had persuaded Gallicanus to get the mob off the streets. The responses of Balbinus to the return of order had been typically ill-judged. Timesitheus had been stripped of the Prefecture of the Praetorians which he had assumed during the crisis. Balbinus, one had to suppose, thus had further alienated the Graeculus from the regime. With the elevation of Gordian, Timesitheus had shown himself active and unscrupulous, ready to play for the highest stakes, and he controlled the grain supply of Rome. The little Greek would make a dangerous enemy. He should have been requited for his endeavour or, better still, eliminated. Conversely, Gallicanus, the instigator of the unrest, in effect had been rewarded by being appointed tutor to the young Caesar. It baffled belief that even the mean comprehension of Balbinus could consider it a good idea to put such a lever of potential power into the hands of a murderous hothead like Gallicanus. There was no doubt in Pupienus’ mind, on his return to Rome, one way or another, his co-Emperor must be removed from the throne. It was for the good of the Res Publica. Philosophy agreed; kingly power was indivisible.

  The gladiators processed across the parade ground to the tribunal. Rather than march, each man swaggered. Seeing them armed and clad in their peculiar equipment outside the confines of the amphitheatre was an all too visible reminder of the instability of the times. Tridents and nets, grilled helmets crowned with fishes, Retiarius and Myrmillo, Samnite and Thracian; their very names and accoutrements proclaimed them the antithesis of Romanitas. The world was turned upside down.

  ‘Those who are about to die salute you.’

  ‘Carry on.’ Needs must, however, Pupienus’ voice contained nothing but disdain.

  The gladiators paired off. They circled and posed, with much twirling of weapons and stamping of boots. Eventually, when the mood took him, each bounded forward, and sparred with exaggerated cuts and thrusts and ostentatious parries.

  The throng of watching civilians exclaimed and called out the odds, as if at the spectacles.

  The plebs were fools, Pupienus thought. Gladiators were the dregs of the earth, slaves and barbarians, barely human. Fat and overfed, they had no stamina or discipline. Battles were not won by fancy strokes and posturing, by individuals leaping and jumping. Soldiers won battles by getting close to the steel, thrusting with the point, by holding the line, gritting their teeth and enduring. No troop of gladiators would ever beat soldiers in a set-piece battle. Pupienus was uncertain if they had the fortitude to defend the city walls.

  The dust shifted up, and the crowd roared.

  Pupienus removed his thoughts from the unseemly pleasures of the plebs, set them to matters of importance.

  At last good news had come from the provinces. In the West, Aedinius Julianus had brought over Gallia Narbonnensis and neighbouring Lugdunensis. He had written of his confidence that Aquitania would soon join them. Control of all three Gallic provinces would isolate Maximinus from two of his loyalists, Decius in Spain, and Capelianus in Africa. Yet it had to be remembered that the provinces of Gaul were unarmed.

  Events across the Adriatic might prove more telling. The Procurator Axius had deposed the governor and seized control of Dacia. Unlike Dalmatia and Thrace, the only other provinces in the region so far to acknowledge Pupienus and his imperial colleagues, Dacia was garrisoned by two legions and numerous auxiliaries. At last the Emperors chosen by the Senate had a regular provincial army at their disposal, and the example of Dacia might ease another armed province into the revolt. The two senatorial envoys, Egnatius Marinianus and Celsinus, were both in negotiations with Tacitus in Moesia Superior. Whatever the outcome of their diplomacy – and failure would bring their death
s – the allegiance of the armies along the Danube ultimately depended on the urbane Honoratus in distant Moesia Inferior.

  There were grounds for guarded optimism, but no more. Apart from a merchant telling that Carrhae had fallen to the Persians more than a month before, Pupienus had heard nothing from the provinces bordering the Euphrates. Recently, sleepless in the long watches of the night, he had found himself praying that the inducements that he had offered his brother would prove enough to sway Catius Clemens in Cappadocia. If he deserted Maximinus the other governors most likely would follow, and finally the rebellion would rest on a significant base of military force. The armies of the East had put men on the throne before – the worthy Vespasian, and the perverted Heliogabalus – and they could do so again. Once that had been accomplished, the loss of Carrhae showed that they would get no rest. There could be no doubt but that one of their new rulers must lead them against the Persians.

  Finally the gladiators drew to a close their inaccurate simulacrum of battle.

  If the spectators had cheered the gladiators, it was as nothing to their enthusiasm for the final unit. The militia were their own, their sons, brothers, husbands.

  The two long columns, both twenty men wide, attempted nothing beyond forming up opposite each other. It did not go well. Individuals lost their place, bumped into and impeded their companions; Century collided with Century. Eventually they shuffled into their lines.

  ‘Testudo.’

  The shields of those on one side clattered together, forming ramshackle walls and roof.

  ‘Throw.’

  The men of the other line took a few faltering paces, and threw the wooden staves that served as javelins. The distance was not above twenty paces, but many fell short. Most of those that hit the target rattled off the leather-clad shields. Yet, some found the inadvertent gaps. The screams and yells of consternation of the shocked and wounded were muffled by the testudo.

  ‘Reverse.’

  The manoeuvre was repeated, with an identical result.

  ‘Enough.’ The militia had been scheduled to indulge in a mock hand-to-hand combat, but Pupienus considered that they would do each other too much unintended damage.