‘We have a huge opportunity here…’ the king said eventually, and the men returned from the bloody futures they had been imagining to pay heed to his words.
Looking at the man, I did not doubt his sincerity. He had the trapped energy of one who knew that he stood on the edge of greatness.
‘Corvus, what will happen when we destroy the five legions of Severus?’
Men turned to face me. Some still held me in distrust. Others, like Vuk, looked to me as a comrade.
‘Severus and his force are tasked with protecting the eastern flank of the Empire,’ I thought aloud, ‘and that region is forever hostile, lord King. There are great tribes beyond it, and there have been revolts in those provinces.
‘If those tribes hear that the five garrison legions have been destroyed, then they will raid. Possibly even invade. Rome would be in danger of losing entire eastern provinces.’
King Pinnes nodded. ‘Severus has marched before,’ he said. ‘He had to return because there was raiding to his army’s rear. Think of that,’ he spoke to his commanders. ‘If there were trouble during a temporary absence of the legions, then how bold would Rome’s enemies become, if they knew that those legions were destroyed, and not coming back?’
The Pannonians were grinning now. They saw their chance. ‘Tiberius would have to split his force, lord.’ Ziva spoke. ‘Send some to protect the east. The rest will remain here to fight us, and they will die.’
Pinnes smiled and said nothing. I believed I knew what was on his mind. If Tiberius were forced to split his army to replace legions lost from the east, then the Pannonians and Dalmatians would be in a strong position to sue for a favourable peace. I was surprised that the king wanted battle at all, but reality had forced his hand: cut off from the coast and from other provinces, the rebel armies were withering and dying. The very mountains that gave them sanctuary allowed Tiberius to block passage of food. This summer, the Romans would raid and destroy anything the rebels could eat. They could not survive another winter, not like this. Pinnes knew that, and Severus’s army had provided him with an opportunity. Fail to take it, and Tiberius would have the greatest army assembled since the civil war between Marc Anthony and Octavian – the man that Rome now called the Emperor Augustus. If Pinnes could eliminate the force from the east, Tiberius would surely be forced into ending the war through diplomacy.
‘Ziva,’ Pinnes asked, ‘how many men can Bato put in the field?’
‘Lord Bato has promised to join us with sixty thousand, lord King.’
Pinnes nodded approvingly. ‘And we can do the same. We will be a hundred and twenty thousand against fifty. Three to one!’ He stretched the truth. I waited for someone to recall that Bato’s force had lost a battle to my own legion when the odds were ten to one in their favour, but no one spoke. These were warriors, and warriors want war.
And maybe they were right. Maybe it would be enough. The truth of the Eighth Legion’s victory was that the Dalmatians had beaten us in the day, on the valley floor. It was only by marching on mountain trails through the night, and descending on their camp in the dark, that we had managed to rout them. Even then, we would probably have been overcome had it not been for sightings of Tiberius’s troops to their rear.
Maybe it would be enough…
‘Ziva,’ I heard Pinnes say, ‘you will go to Bato and guide his army to join us.’
‘You honour me, lord King. I will not fail you.’
‘How long until Severus’s army reaches Sirmium?’
‘The prisoners were told five days, lord. My scouts are out now to confirm it.’
‘They can’t fit fifty thousand within the town’s walls,’ King Pinnes told us. ‘I expect they will make camp outside it and then advance along the Sava to Siscia.’
That made sense. The deep river Sava flowed through Siscia, and the valley was wide with plains. Good country for the Romans. Bad for the rebels.
‘We will stop them before they leave Sirmium,’ Pinnes said confidently. ‘Tell Bato we will meet him in five days, Ziva. Corvus?’
‘Yes, lord King?’
‘The legions make camp every night, is this not so?’
‘They do, lord King.’
Pinnes looked over his men. ‘Then we will let the Romans make their beds outside of Sirmium.’ He grinned as a wolf. ‘And when they wake, they will find us there to slit their throats.’
Chapter 35
King Pinnes and his commanders set about making their plans to break camp and march to Sirmium, where they would force a battle.
Ziva had been tasked to ride to Bato and bring the Dalmatian forces to the field. I expected that King Pinnes had chosen Ziva because he had recognised the same thing that I had during the Dalmatian’s visit: Bato and Ziva had bonded. If Bato had any hesitation about the plan, Ziva would be the right man to convince him to come to the Pannonian’s side.
Not that I expected Bato would need pushing into a fight. The man was born for battle, and I had seen in his eyes that he burned with shame for the defeats he had suffered in the early days of this war. If anything, I worried that he would arrive and engage the Romans before us.
The Romans.
Us.
There was no doubt in my mind on whose side I stood. There hadn’t been since I had seen a spear punch through Albus’s heart. He was a soldier of Rome – a brother of my legion – and instead of avenging his death I had stepped over his body and committed theft and treason.
I thought of the letter that Vuk had brought me from Ziva. My stomach turned over. Perhaps the thought of the names it contained was what kept me in the king’s hall. I didn’t command a body of troops, and so I had little to add to or draw from the conversation about deployment and movement, but I stayed on the outer edge of the gathering should the king need my opinion. Though I did not consider myself an expert on war, other men did by virtue of the fact that I had carried a legion’s eagle. I thought it silly – no surgeon would ask his scalpel for its opinion on medicine, and I saw myself as little more than a blade.
And would that blade draw Roman blood?
It was a question that I couldn’t answer. True, I had been a witness to the deaths of Albus and the sentries at the camp, but I had not so much as unsheathed my own sword. I had been a key to the pay chests, a spectator to death. War was a constant of life. To some degree, we are always watching from the stadium as others die. Perhaps not for entertainment, but out of necessity. Pirates must die so that grain from Egypt reaches Italia. Murderers must be executed so that there is not anarchy in cities. Somewhere, somehow, someone is dying on our behalf.
And on whose behalf was my father killed?
My legion’s, of course. He died for the honour of the Eighth. For the pride of the Eighth.
The names of those four men were within my tent. Within my grasp.
I looked around the commanders planning war against Rome. They knew my name – Corvus the Traitor – but they did not know me. I had a friendship with Thumper, though I expected he was every man’s friend. I had a bond with Vuk, forged through shared hardship, and I had a bond with the king, built on shared loneliness.
He was alone.
I was alone.
I was not amongst brothers, in this army. Was I any better than a parasite? Clinging to them to prolong my own life? Delaying the moment where I must confront those who had been my family?
‘Corvus.’ Vuk.
He had wine. ‘Thank you.’ We drank in silence. Silence was his way. His dark eyes were peaceful. If he was excited or frightened at what was to come, then I saw no hint of it.
The others in the hall were deep in conversation over tactics, boasting of victory to come. It seemed I was a latecomer to the wine. Vuk spoke evenly, his words audible only to me.
‘Can you kill Romans?’
He didn’t look at me as he said it. He wanted my answer to be easy, and honest.
‘I don’t know.’
There was no change on his face. No anger.
No disappointment. ‘Can you protect the king?’
I nodded. I meant it. ‘I can protect the king.’
‘Then do that,’ he said, and raised his cup. His eyes were on his leader. His eyes were on the hope of Pannonia.
‘These commanders,’ Vuk went on, ‘they are all of Pannonia, but they are of different tribes. Only Pinnes holds them together. Only he can keep this alliance intact, and manage Bato. If King Pinnes falls, the rebellion dies with him.’
Vuk’s words were steady, grim and true. I saw it now. I admired it. The skill of a leader. The dance of politics. The weave of diplomacy. How little I had appreciated the impressive display of holding an alliance and army together through a summer of war, and then a winter of ravaging cold and hunger.
‘He is a great man,’ I realised.
‘He is more than a man.’ Vuk finally turned his head and looked at me. ‘He is a king, Corvus, and we must do anything to protect him. Anything, Corvus.’
I knew what he meant, and when I looked at the king, and saw him smiling easily with his men, I knew that I would not hesitate to give my own life for his.
‘I am ready,’ I told him.
Ready for war.
Chapter 36
The days before battle are the worst. This is the time when war is waged in the space between a man’s ears, and he has to fight his thoughts. What will happen to me if I’m injured? What will happen to my friends if I falter? What will happen to my family if we lose?
There are a million thoughts and questions, but they all share a common ancestor: fear of the unknown.
There is almost a release in going into battle knowing that you are doomed. I had felt that way before the fight outside Siscia, when we faced odds of ten to one. We had made jokes before that fight, pretending that we might live, but the truth was that none of us expected to see the end of the day. We had gone to that field ready to sell our lives dearly – some of us for Rome, all of us for our brothers – and it had been a welcome surprise when we had lived to fight on. Yes, the acceptance of death is a powerful thing, but it was not one I could muster this time, before what was to come against Severus’s army.
What troubled me was hope.
If Bato arrived with his army and we outnumbered the Romans, we had hope of victory.
If we could destroy the five legions, we had hope of ending the war.
If the war could be ended, and the legions dispersed, I had hope of avoiding the brotherly reunion that I dreaded above all else.
If I could avoid that day, and the death that I knew would come of it, I had hope that I could see more of Miran.
Hope. A soldier’s greatest ally, and his most deadly saboteur. Such wishful thinking had turned my mind into an endless churn of ‘what if?’.
What if Severus wouldn’t come to battle?
What if the king fell?
…what if I just left this camp and never came back?
I laughed at that. Where would I go? To Britannia, and Cynbel? Though I loved that man and wished nothing more than to see my old friend, that island was as alien to me as the rebel army.
To Siscia then, and Brutus? And what? Be killed the first day that a familiar soldier laid eyes on me?
I could ride east. Offer my services as a mercenary. And to what end? To find myself in exactly the same position as I was now?
I belonged nowhere.
I was alone everywhere.
I got to my feet, and resolved myself to change that.
* * *
The Dalmatian hostages were accommodated in the higher reaches of the camp.
When I reached the shacks I asked for Miran and Borna, but I got more blank looks than answers.
‘Corvus?’ I finally heard.
She was behind me.
I forgot my greeting and blurted out what was most on my mind.
‘You’re married,’ I said. She didn’t know what to say to that. Neither did I. ‘What I mean,’ I tried again, ‘is that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends.’
I saw relief on her face.
‘I would like that,’ she said after a moment. There was more – there was much more – but I had said enough – shown enough – for us to pretend that it wasn’t there.
‘I’m glad that you’ve come,’ she told me, though she kept her distance. ‘The whole camp knows that the army is leaving. I didn’t want you to go without saying goodbye.’
I was caught short of words.
‘We’re to stay here,’ Miran said.
I hoped that my worry didn’t show on my face. Yes, there was a palisade, but it was a large camp, and whatever defensive garrison was left behind would be stretched thin.
She read me like one of Cynbel’s scrolls. ‘You think we should go with the army?’
‘No. You’ll be safe here.’
‘I hope you fight better than you lie, Corvus.’ There was a smile threatening to break out on her face: the expression of one who had chosen to laugh at danger, rather than quake before it. I looked at her crooked nose. Remembered the courage that she had showed that day.
‘We march out in the morning,’ I said.
She said nothing, so I spoke the first thing that came into my head.
‘Would you like to get drunk?’
* * *
That night Miran and Thumper helped me finish the wine that I had acquired from Vuk. Borna slept soundly behind us in my tent as Miran snorted with laughter at another of Thumper’s tall tales, this one about the time he had seen the ghost of one of his cows.
‘She was one of my favourites, before we slaughtered her. I don’t think she forgave me. That’s why she came back.’
‘How do you know it was a ghost?’ Miran giggled.
‘Because I saw her at night, and in the morning she was gone.’
Miran laughed. I laughed.
‘Why are you laughing?’
‘Because it was a dream, Thumper!’
A look passed over Thumper’s face. ‘I hadn’t thought about that…’
That set us off again. When was I last this happy?
The wine had a lot to do with it, of course, but the company of those two was a joy. Something I had been a stranger to.
Miran was looking at me.
‘What?’
‘You tell us a story.’
‘Corvus doesn’t do stories,’ Thumper grinned, ‘he just does brooding.’
‘And thieving,’ Miran added.
‘And thieving.’
They shared a laugh at my expense. I didn’t mind. I was happy.
‘Tell me more about your children, Thumper,’ Miran asked.
They were happy stories, full of pride. For all that he’d said about not liking children, Thumper was a loving father.
‘I hope they live through this war,’ he said wistfully. ‘I would like to farm with them, and die knowing they will have full bellies and a quiet life.’
Miran smiled, and squeezed his arm. They shared a knowing look that only a parent would understand.
‘When are you going to put some children out into the world?’ Thumper winked at me. I saw Miran blush, though she giggled too. ‘The world could use a miniature Corvus. You wouldn’t have so much time for brooding if you had little ones to keep you busy.’
I shook my head. Miran laughed.
‘I’m serious Corvus,’ Thumper went on, ‘we’ve all been there. Too much time to think is no good for anyone. Why do you think people have children? For fun? Gods no! The little bastards are a test every day. You do it to give yourself purpose,’ he said passionately. ‘You do it to give your life meaning. Isn’t that right, Miran?’
She smiled, and looked lovingly at her sleeping son. ‘It changes you,’ she agreed. ‘What you want in life, and how you see it… it’s different, once you have them.’
I said nothing. It had been a long time since I had considered fatherhood.
‘A man needs a family,’ Thumper said with conviction, and I saw a look pass over Miran’s face
as I flinched at his words. Thumper noticed it too. ‘I didn’t mean anything by it, you understand?’
‘I know.’ And I did. A man needs a family. A family of flesh and blood. A family of comrades. A man needs family, or else what is he striving for?
‘Pass me the wine?’ I asked him.
‘We’re out.’
My smile faltered. For a second, the conversation died.
And then Miran reached out and picked up a scroll. My heart stopped as a piece of paper fell from it. A piece of paper with four names.
She moved to pick it up from the tent floor.
I snatched it from her hand.
She said nothing, but her eyes said everything. There was fear in them. She had recognised something in my face.
Instantly the mood had changed. We were sober.
I knew that my next words would either repair or ruin the night.
‘I need to sleep,’ I said.
With confusion in her eyes Miran lifted her son into her arms. Thumper said that he would escort her through the camp.
I’d driven them from me, and pushed emotion into the pit of my stomach. Before I could think on it any longer, I tore the paper apart, and lost the names within.
I belong nowhere.
I am alone everywhere.
Chapter 37
We marched to battle.
The army was on the move, a snake of shield and sword and spear that uncoiled itself down the mountain, and spilled slowly down to the valley below. Horses brayed and men chattered. There was laughter, there were cheers. There was fear in every note, and there was hope, and there was prayer. Thousands of goodbyes. Thousands of promises.
‘I will be back.’
‘I will protect you.’
‘Let’s kill the bastards.’
I was one of the first to be ready to leave. I had no goodbyes to make. My promises meant nothing. I had not spoken again to Miran, and the words that Thumper had for me were angry.
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