The Eagle's Prey

by Simon Scarrow

  Macro tore his eyes away from Maximius, recomposed his livid expression and cleared his throat noisily. ‘Because there weren’t as many men there as there should have been, sir. That, and the fact that we found only a handful of usable trenching tools at the depot. The raiders had burned the rest. When I reached the ford, we didn’t have enough tools, nor enough time to prepare a ditch and rampart. The best defence I could make was to erect a barrier on the island and place some sharpened stakes into the crossing. We had only a handful of axes and most had to cut wood with their swords.’

  ‘Fair enough. I accept there was little chance to prepare anything better. But why did you fall back before the rest of the cohort could reach the ford? Had you received many casualties?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Were you outflanked?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Then why break off contact and retreat? I assume you had a good reason.’

  Macro looked surprised. ‘Why, of course, sir.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘The enemy’s second attack had cleared away a section of our defences and they were preparing a fresh assault on our line. They were using heavy infantry, formed into a testudo, sir. Soon as I saw that I knew we’d have to give ground, link up with Centurion Maximius and try to hold the bank on our side of the river.’

  ‘A testudo?’ Plautius smiled faintly. ‘You claim they formed a testudo?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Made quite a decent job of it too.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure they did, Centurion. Decent enough to send you running.’

  ‘I didn’t run, sir,’ Macro growled. ‘Never have and never will.’

  ‘What did you do, then?’

  ‘I think you’ll find it referred to as a fighting withdrawal in the manuals, sir.’

  ‘We’ll see about that …’ General Plautius looked down at his notes. ‘On to the last charge. Centurion Maximius, would you say that your men prosecuted the defence of the ford as effectively as they might have done?’

  ‘Frankly, sir, no. No, I don’t. The lads were tired, sir. We’d run the last mile or so to the ford and gone straight into the fight with no time to recover. The men were exhausted and, well, as soon as they saw how many of the enemy there were on the far side waiting to come across and fight us …’

  ‘Yes?’

  Maximius looked down at his boots. ‘I think they got scared, sir. Fight went right out of them. So we pulled back and waited for support. I had no choice. No sense in throwing the cohort away if it wasn’t prepared to fight.’ He looked up defiantly. ‘On any other day—’

  ‘Centurion!’ Plautius snapped. ‘There’s never another day. Just the one you’re in. You, and your men, have failed to live up to the standards required of legionaries.’

  The general paused before passing his judgement. He intended more than a cheap theatrical effect. The men must have some moments to anticipate their fate with a growing sense of dread.

  ‘The Third Cohort will be denied shelter for six months. They will be denied the shelter of barracks. Their standards will be stripped of any decorations. Pay will be suspended and their rations restricted to barley and water. Sentence effective immediately.’

  Despite the prospect of half a year of unremitting discomfort, Cato felt more shame than anything else. Every unit in the army would know that he, and the other officers and men of the cohort, had failed in their duty. Their bare standards would be badges of dishonour everywhere they marched. He knew that the shadow of this evening’s judgement would linger over him longer than six months; men’s memory of the crime always outlived the duration of the punishment.

  The general slapped his slate notebook closed and was about to rise when the Imperial Secretary leaned towards him and placed a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘A moment, if you please, General.’

  ‘What is it?’

  Narcissus leaned closer and spoke in a low voice so that only Plautius would hear. The silence in the tent was unnatural as everyone else kept quite still and strained to catch any of the words passing between the two men. Plautius listened a moment, before a look of horror flitted over his face, and he shook his head. Narcissus spoke intently, stabbing his finger in the general’s direction to emphasise his points. At length the general appeared to give way, and nodded solemnly. He turned to Vespasian and whispered something. Vespasian stared ahead, at the officers of his Third Cohort, lips compressed tightly.

  General Plautius leaned back and folded his hands together before he addressed the other men in the tent. ‘In view of the seriousness of the Third Cohort’s dereliction of duty, and in order to set an example to the rest of the army serving in this province and beyond, the sentence has been revised to include decimation. Lots to be drawn by centuries immediately. Executions will take place at dawn, the day after next, before an assembly of units representing each of the legions. Tribune! Take the officers out to join their men.’

  As the centurions filed out of the headquarters tent Cato watched their expressions as they passed. Maximius looked down, refusing to meet anyone’s eyes. Tullius looked ashen-faced. Macro was still angry and communicated his bitter resentment to Cato with a slight shake of the head as he marched stiffly by. Felix and Antonius appeared stunned. Then Cato turned and joined the end of the line as the escort marched them outside. He felt numb, and the hard reality of the world around him seemed somehow distant and vague.

  Decimation. He’d only ever read of it: the most dreadful of the field punishments that could be imposed upon the men of the legions. One man in ten, selected by lot, would be beaten to death by his comrades. The odds made him feel sick with fear.

  The centurions were returned to their places in front of their centuries and then all were made to wait in silence, in the wavering glare of the reed torches, until six clerks emerged from the headquarters tent. Each carried a plain Samian ware jar. They spread out, one heading towards each of the centuries of the Third Cohort. When they were in position, Tribune Plinius stepped forward.

  ‘Every man in each century is to draw a corn tally from the jar in front of them. If you draw a white tally you will return to your unit. Any man who draws a black tally will be escorted to one side.’

  A groan of despair welled up from the Third Cohort as they realised the nature of their punishment.

  ‘Silence!’ screamed the senior tribune. ‘You will be silent when a senior officer addresses you!’

  He glowered at the terrified men on parade in front of him. ‘Begin!’

  The legionaries approached the clerks by sections to draw their lots. Beside each clerk stood two men from the First Cohort, one holding a torch above the jar to ensure that each man’s tally was clearly visible when it emerged and the other to escort the unlucky ones away. Cato turned towards his men.

  ‘First section! To the front!’

  The eight men marched up to the clerk. He raised the pot above eyelevel so that the men could not see inside, and then the first man reached in. There was a dull rattling noise as his fingers probed the tallies.

  ‘Draw it quickly!’ the legionary holding the torch growled.

  The man withdrew his hand and showed the tally to the clerk – a wooden disc, the size of a denarius.

  ‘White!’ the clerk called out and the first man turned round and walked quickly away, hurrying back towards the rest of the century, hands trembling with relief.

  ‘White!’ cried the clerk for the next man.

  ‘Black!’

  The third man stared into the palm of his hand, frozen in place, staring as if at any moment the disc would turn white in front of his eyes.

  ‘Come on, you!’ The legionary grabbed him by the arm and thrust him towards the squad of guards waiting behind the senior tribune. ‘Over there. Let’s go!’

  The man stumbled as he was half dragged away from his comrades. He glanced back over his shoulder and caught Cato’s eye. The appeal for help was as clear as it could be, but there was nothing Cato could do,
and he shook his head helplessly, and looked away.

  So it continued, and a steady trickle of victims was separated from the rest of the cohort. Cato saw Maximius take his turn, draw a white tally and turn away, clutching it like a lucky talisman. Maybe that was an omen for him too, he decided, and he turned to his optio.

  ‘Come on, Figulus. We’ll draw ours with the next section.’

  Two of the eight men ahead of them drew black tallies, and Cato quickly calculated that only one could still be in the jar. One black and twenty-six white. Good odds. Even as his spirits rose at the thought he felt ashamed that those odds had been improved at the cost of the lives of some of the men whom he had let go ahead of him.

  It was Figulus’ turn, and the huge Gaul hesitated in front of the jar. ‘Go on, son,’ the legionary with the torch whispered. ‘Don’t let ‘em see you’re afraid.’

  ‘I’m not,’ Figulus hissed back. ‘I’m not, you bastard!’

  He stepped forward, plunged his hand into the jar, snatched the first tally that fell into his grasp and drew it out.

  ‘White!’ cried the clerk, then turned to Cato.

  His heart was beating fast and he could feel the blood pounding in his ears. Yet he felt cold, the night air icy on his skin, even though he knew it was warm. The clerk gestured towards him with the jar.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ The quiet words came from his lips like another man’s voice and even though Cato wanted more than anything to back away from that jar he found himself rooted in front of it. His hand rose up, over the rim and began to dip down inside. Cato noticed a hairline fracture that ran, in a fine black line, down from a tiny chip on the rim of the jar, and wondered what accident had caused that to happen. Then the tips of his fingers brushed against the small pile of tallies remaining in the bottom of the jar. For an instant his hand recoiled. Then he gritted his teeth, and closed his hand round one of the wooden discs, drawing it out of the jar. Cato stared at the face of the clerk as he opened his fist. The clerk’s eyes dropped down and there was a flicker of pity in his expression as he opened his mouth.

  ‘Black!’

  Chapter Nineteen

  The Imperial Secretary left the army just after dawn, accompanied by his two bodyguards and four full squadrons of auxiliary cavalry. After the earlier attempt on his life Narcissus was not prepared to take any more chances. He had delivered the Emperor’s motivational threat to the general and would be the bearer of some good news on the way home. Caratacus’ army had been smashed and all that remained was to mop up the survivors. The commander of the native forces had used up the goodwill of the lowland tribes and would find little sympathy for any further struggle from that quarter. A generation of young warriors had been sacrificed for the cause, and across the land families wept bitter tears for their sons, lying dead and buried in fields far from home. It was only a matter of time, Narcissus comforted himself, before Caratacus was killed or captured. Barring a few druid troublemakers, peddling their bizarre philosophies and religious practices from the safety of obscure sanctuaries, the province was as good as conquered. That should keep the Emperor’s critics quiet for a while.

  The column of horses splashed across the ford, shattering the calm surface of the river. On either side a thin milky white mist rose up along the river and spilled over on to the banks. The horsemen emerged from the crossing and climbed the track that led towards Calleva. The Atrebatan capital would be a safe place to spend the night now that the tribe had been incorporated into the kingdom of the Regenses, ruled by the sycophantically loyal Cogidubnus.

  Narcissus smiled. There would never be any trouble from Cogidubnus. That man had been bought body and soul, and aped the ways of his Roman masters with a rare enthusiasm. All it had taken was some vague promise of building him a palace as soon as funds allowed.

  As Narcissus rode past the side of the Second Legion’s marching camp, he saw, a short way off, hundreds of men labouring to erect a stockade. That would be the Third Cohort, he mused with a faint smile of satisfaction. The harsh judgement meted out to those men would act as a fine example to their comrades in the four legions gathered about the crossing. Better still, it would satisfy the armchair generals of the senate back in Rome, who would be pleased to know that the legions still cleaved to the harsh and hardening traditions that had won them an empire that stretched around the limits of the known world.

  A small party of men sat to one side, under guard, hands tied behind them. They looked up as the horsemen trotted by. Narcissus realised they were the condemned men, due to be beaten to death by the men of their cohort the following day. Most looked vacant; some were sullen. Then Narcissus started as he found himself looking into a face he had once known well back in the halls and corridors of the imperial palace. He flicked his reins and steered his horse off the track, waving at his escort to keep moving. The bodyguards, silently fell into position on either side and slightly behind the Imperial Secretary.

  ‘Cato …’ Narcissus began to smile, but the young centurion just glared back at him, eyes filled with a pitiless fury. ‘You’re to be executed?’

  Cato was still for a moment before he nodded, once. Narcissus, so used to deciding the fates of men who were rarely ever more than names or numbers on a writing tablet, was uncomfortable to be confronted with this man he had watched grow from an infant into a gangly youth. The son of a man he had once called friend. Now Cato would die in order to maintain belief in the uncompromising discipline of the legions. In that respect, Narcissus consoled himself, the lad would be dying a martyr’s death. Most unfortunate, but necessary.

  Narcissus felt he must say something, some kind of valediction that would comfort the young man so that he would understand. But all that came to mind were empty platitudes that would demean both of them.

  ‘I’m sorry, Cato. It had to be done.’

  ‘Why?’ Cato replied through clenched teeth. ‘We did our duty. You must tell the general. Tell him to change his mind.’

  Narcissus shook his head. ‘No. That’s impossible. I’m sorry, my hands are tied.’

  Cato stared at him a moment, then laughed bitterly as he raised his hands to reveal the rope that bound his wrists. Narcissus coloured but could not think of anything further to say. Nothing to comfort this youth, nor to justify the need for his death. Greater destinies than his were at stake, and much as Narcissus had once been genuinely fond of the boy, nothing must come between the Imperial Secretary and his duty to protect and further the Emperor’s interests. So Cato must die. Narcissus clicked his tongue and firmly tugged on the reins. The horse snorted and turned back towards the track.

  Cato watched him go, a twisted expression of distaste curling his lips. He had hated to beg for a reprieve in front of the others. But it was for them that he made the attempt, he tried to convince himself. Narcissus represented the last chance of an appeal over the general’s head. Now he was gone, already lost from sight in the column of horsemen that trotted up the track towards Calleva, kicking up a haze of dust in their wake.

  When they were out of sight Cato slumped to the ground and stared at the grass between his bare feet. This time tomorrow, he and the forty other men condemned to death would be led into a loose circle of their comrades and friends from the Third Cohort. They would be carrying heavy wooden clubs, and when the signal was given they would close in and beat the prisoners to death, one by one. Cursed with a vivid imagination, Cato projected the scene inside his head, clear in every terrible detail. The blur of clubs sweeping down, the dull thud and crack of wood on flesh and bone, and the winded gasps and cries of bound men, curled into balls on the blood-drenched ground. Some of the men would soil themselves, to the jeers of their executioners, and when Cato’s time came he would have to kneel amid their blood, piss and excrement while he waited for his death to come.

  It was shaming, humiliating, and Cato hoped that he would have the strength of spirit to die without a whimper, silently staring his defiance
back at his killers. But he knew it would not be like that. He would be dragged, shivering and filthy to the killing ground. He might not beg for mercy, but he would cry out at the first blow, and scream at the rest. Cato prayed that a badly aimed blow struck him on the head early on, so that he was unconscious when his beaten, broken body eventually released his spirit.

  That was wishful thinking, he sneered at himself. The executioners would be carefully briefed to make sure that his arms and legs were shattered before they were permitted to break his ribs. Only then would they be allowed to take their clubs to his skull, and end the torment. He felt sick, and bile simmered uneasily in his stomach, so that he was glad that he had not eaten since early the previous day. Memory of the food cooked by Maximius’ slave caused him to retch and Cato raised his bound hands to cover his mouth until the impulse to vomit passed.

  A hand rested gently on his shoulder. ‘You all right, lad?’

  Cato quickly swallowed the bitter fluid in his mouth and looked round to see Macro looming over him with an uncertain smile on his creased face. A quick glance showed that the rest of the condemned men were too preoccupied to spare him any curious attention. He quickly shook his head.

  ‘Not surprised.’ Macro’s fingers squeezed his shoulder as the older centurion squatted down beside Cato. ‘It’s a bad business. We’ve been well and truly shafted. You and this lot most of all … Look here, Cato. I don’t know what to say about this. It stinks. I wish there was something I could do to change it. I really do. But …’

  ‘But there’s nothing that can be done. I know.’ Cato forced himself to smile. ‘We’re here because we’re here. Isn’t that what the old hands say?’

  Macro nodded. ‘That’s right. But it only applies when the situation’s out of our control. This could’ve been prevented – should have been. Bloody general’s screwed up and he wants someone else to carry the blame. Bastard.’