by R. W. Peake
“If Runo retreats farther south, that's going to encourage the Bastarnae to stay on this side of the river,” I said doubtfully. “And we still don’t know for sure that they aren’t cooperating.”
“If they are, they’re doing a horrible job of it,” Crassus said, his tone a bit short.
Understanding that he had made up his mind, I kept my mouth shut. Seeing that I was not going to argue, he wheeled his mount about to watch the men, who were finishing up their looting.
“We don’t have much daylight left, but I don’t want to make camp here because of the stink, even though this is a good spot.”
He looked over at me and asked, “You were in those woods. How far to the other side? Did you get a chance to see what the ground looks like?”
I thought for a moment, trying to recall how wide the strip of forested land was, then replied, “It’s not more than a mile. In fact, it’s probably a bit less, but we never made it out of the woods, so I don’t know. I imagine that it’s not much different than where we’re at now.”
“Take the Sixth Cohort and using the Evocati as a screen, push through the woods and see what’s on the other side,” Crassus ordered.
Trotting over to the Sextus Pilus Prior, I relayed what Crassus wanted, and in moments, we were leading the Sixth down the slope into the trees. It was easy to follow the trail of the retreating Moesians that had gone crashing through the underbrush in their headlong flight from the battlefield, leaving behind trampled earth and torn-up bushes, along with a variety of debris that is always part of a scene where fighting has taken place. Pierced shields, studded with the shafts of our javelins were the most common, along with bloodstained garments. Farther along inside the relative shelter of the forest, we found the first of the men too badly wounded to keep up with their fleeing comrades. A good number of them had already succumbed to their wounds, but the ones who still lingered were quickly dispatched by the men of the Sixth marching just behind us. Giving the order to spread out, we rode with our hands on our swords. Despite the unlikelihood that Runo would have his wits about him enough to leave some men behind to ambush us on entering the forest, I had not survived this long by taking unnecessary risks, and my Evocati comrades were of a like mind. When we had been in the forest the first time, it had taken only a matter of a few moments before we were at the far edge, but we had been going at a full gallop then. Now the time dragged by as we moved slowly and carefully, still following the trail of the Moesians, which at least made the way easier. Finally reaching the far edge, I ordered a halt, both to give the Legionaries a rest and to decide what to do next. I did not like the idea of bursting out into the open without knowing what was facing us, but peering through the brush, even as trampled down as it was, only allowed us to see a few hundred paces ahead. To get a good idea of the lay of the land, and more importantly to ensure there was no ambush, there was nothing for it but to go out there.
Calling to Scribonius and Balbus, I said, “You may as well go with me.”
“Why is it always us?” Balbus grumbled as he followed along.
“When did you become such an old woman?” I asked him.
“When I realized I actually had a chance to live to a ripe old age,” he countered. “But you seem determined to keep that from happening.”
“At least you’re not bored.”
“I could do with some boredom,” Balbus replied, except by this point we were already out into the open.
After the gloom of the thick woods, I had to pause a moment to let my eyes adjust to the bright light before taking a good look. If there had been archers or other missile troops about, we would have made very tempting targets, especially since I was wearing the muscle cuirass I had been presented at my retirement, marking me as a high-ranking officer. I made a mental note to wear my old mail shirt the next time we went into battle, it being less conspicuous and more comfortable as well. With my eyes adjusted, I scanned the surrounding terrain, first nearby, looking for an immediate threat, then farther out. Following the scarred and battered earth with my eyes, I could just make out the tail end of the Moesian army on its continued retreat, except they had slowed to a walk. There was another ridge perhaps two miles away, and the leading edge of the Moesian army was just crossing over it as we watched. Balbus pointed to a spot on the ridge that looked flatter, like some giant had cut off the top of the hill.
“That looks like a good spot to camp. By the time we get there, the Moesians will be long gone.”
Agreeing with him, we began to head back to the rest of the Legion. The Sextus Pilus Prior called my name and when I trotted Ocelus over to him, he asked if I wanted them to march back with the rest of the Evocati. Remembering what it was like to be marched back and forth by heedless officers, I told him to remain in place to wait for us to come back. I was rewarded with a smile and an enthusiastic salute, then I caught up with the others.
The engineering officers were sent forward to survey the spot that Balbus had found, while the Legion marched up. Fortunately, Balbus’ eye for picking a spot was sharp, the engineers finding it suitable, with a stream flowing at the foot of the ridge on our side to provide water. Because we would not be staying more than a night, it did not need much more consideration, and the sun was hanging low, just above the horizon when the 8th began work on the camp. While the men worked, Crassus held an impromptu war council with Macrinus, Cornelius, and me to discuss our next move.
“As I told you earlier, I'm determined to chastise Runo in a manner that neither he nor the Moesians will ever forget. They'll be easy to follow, but we're going to be cautious. We hurt them today, but we didn’t break them, and they're still dangerous.”
He paused, waiting for comments, but I did not have anything to add to that, since he had addressed my major concern. Chasing a wounded enemy is always a dangerous business, because fear makes men desperate, and desperate men are unpredictable. As long as we were cautious, I was not too concerned.
“The biggest problem,” Crassus continued, “is that we're almost blind without Silva and his squadron. But we have 20 Evocati, and they'll have to do.” Looking at me, he said, “Prefect, I want you and the Evocati out scouting. Go in pairs or at most in a group of four, and take spare mounts with you. I want you out at least five miles in front of us at all times, and I'll need constant reports back.”
This was the first scouting mission I had performed in many, many years, and the first time ever I had done it on horseback. Still, I knew there was no other answer than to say, “Yes sir.” Which I did, thinking about the best way to accomplish what Crassus had tasked us with.
“What if they reach a town or city?” Macrinus asked this question, and Crassus did not hesitate.
“We take it. We have our artillery, which I believe is more than adequate for whatever we may run into.”
His words immediately reminded me of Samosata, with its huge black stone walls that we had been completely unprepared for, but I kept my thoughts to myself.
“Along the way, we lay waste to everything we find,” Crassus finished. “No farm, no village, nothing is to be left standing two miles on either side of our march. Prefect, I'm counting on you and your Evocati to let me know of anything worth destroying as well.”
With our orders given, we retired to our respective men. Despite the fact that the Evocati were not formally under my command, it was turning out that Crassus viewed them as an extension of my post, and for the rest of the time I was with him, it was to be that way.
“I think the best way to proceed is with two groups of four and six pairs. The larger groups will ride parallel, on either side of the line of march of the Moesians,” I explained. “The rest of you will be responsible for making sure that nobody suddenly shows up on our flanks, and spotting anything that’s worth burning and looting. Crassus’ orders are pretty clear on this. We burn everything that we can’t take with us.”
There are few orders more welcome than the one that gives men a license to
run wild. Any pig, chicken, or item that had the smallest value was fair game, not to mention the women that were not smart or fortunate enough to make themselves scarce, so my words were met by wide grins all around. Because these men would be the first to find anything that met that description, it also meant that they would have the first choice of the most valuable loot, provided, of course, they could carry it with them on horseback. Nonetheless, as I had seen on more occasions than I could count, a woman fit across a man’s saddle quite easily. Once the basic orders were given, the next task was to determine who would be in each group. My group was easy; selecting Scribonius and Balbus, we filled out the fourth with a grizzled veteran and former Secundus Pilus Prior of the 12th Legion, Aulus Novanus, a short, barrel-chested man originally from Cisalpine Gaul, whose Latin still carried the accent of the region. With these matters settled, we retired for the evening, ready to start out the next day in search of the Moesians.
Leaving behind the men breaking camp, we set out the next morning, heading southeast. As I have said many times before, there is no way for an army to hide its trail, especially one that is leaving behind men who have finally succumbed to their wounds. The trail was marked with a series of freshly dug graves as we went, rapidly reaching the five-mile mark that Crassus had set with no sight of the enemy. We could just see the other group of four horsemen, led by an Evocatus named Maxentius, at least when the terrain permitted. We were each leading an extra horse like Crassus had commanded, but I had no intention of using the spare, such was my confidence in Ocelus. He never seemed to tire, and was always eager to see what lay just on the other side of a hill. Now he was pulling at the reins, clearly chafing at the stop, but we were not going to move for a bit and he finally settled down to start chomping at tufts of grass while we scanned the horizon. Finally, I spotted a far off smudge hanging low in the sky, trailing off a bit farther south than the trail would indicate. Since none of us knew anything about Moesia, we had no way of knowing whether or not Runo was taking his army to a city or town. The fact that it appeared that the Moesians had changed course might mean any number of things, but there was only one way to find out. After waiting what I deemed sufficient time for the 8th to have closed the gap on the march, I sent Balbus back to Crassus with the news that the Moesians had turned.
“We’re going to cut across, so come back to this spot and then head for that notch and you’ll pick up our trail,” I told Balbus, pointing to a spot in the hills that roughly intersected with the cloud of dust.
Climbing back aboard our mounts, we headed out, after signaling Maxentius’ group of our change of direction. It quickly became apparent why the Moesians had not taken the most direct route; the ground becoming rougher, the terrain undulating even more. It was not bad for horses, but for men it would have been extremely wearing, especially for a mob as demoralized as this one. The good part of it was that it allowed us to close with the Moesians more quickly, despite putting us in danger more quickly as well, since it was highly likely we would run into Moesian cavalry patrols. While it was certainly harder going than the track we had been on, I was confident that the men of the 8th were fit enough to traverse this terrain without much difficulty. It was about midday when we stopped again, the cloud of dust much closer now while the Moesians kept moving on their new course. Just when we were about to start out again, Scribonius called out, pointing back in the direction we had just come, and I turned to see Balbus trotting up.
“Did you have any trouble finding us?”
“A little,” he admitted. “But I marked the spot where we turned off from the Moesian trail, so they should find it with no problems.”
Thinking about it for a moment, I decided it was time for a conference between my group and that of Maxentius, and I cantered Ocelus to the top of the small hill that we had stopped on. Pulling up, I looked in the direction where I had last seen Maxentius and the other men, yet there was no sign of them anywhere. Cursing, I scanned the area, looking down into the nooks and crannies of the surrounding ground. Still I saw nothing, not a wisp of dust or a sign of disturbed earth that would give a hint of what had happened to them. I seriously doubted they had been ambushed; the air was quiet that day, making the sounds of fighting carry even the distance between us. Deciding to press on in the hope that Maxentius and his men had just chosen to go in a direction that took them out of my range of vision, I rode back down the hill, whereupon we resumed our journey. Shortly after we did so, Novanus, who was riding in the lead at that moment, suddenly pulled up short on the crest of a small hill. We all immediately stopped, while he signaled for me to join him, and I trotted Ocelus up.
“What is it?”
In answer, he simply asked, “Notice anything?” while pointing to the last spot that we had seen the dust cloud.
Following his finger, I saw immediately what he was referring to; there was no longer a dust cloud.
“They’ve stopped,” I muttered, looking at the sun in the sky.
“They’re either stopping early, or they’ve arrived where they were headed,” Novanus replied.
“There’s only one way to find out.”
I signaled to Scribonius and Balbus to join us, informing them of the new development.
“Should one of us go back and alert Crassus?” Scribonius asked, but after considering for a moment, I shook my head.
“Not until we know for sure. I just wish Maxentius and his bunch would show up somewhere. Now that we’re getting close, it’s going to be more dangerous.”
“Remember what we’re supposed to be doing,” Scribonius warned. “If we get caught, then we’ve failed.”
“If we get caught, we’re not going to give a brass obol if we failed, because we’ll be dead,” Balbus interjected sourly.
With that cheerful thought, we began closing the distance to where the Moesians had stopped.
Not long after we resumed, we reached a river. Wide, but fortunately not deep, it was nonetheless nerve-wracking to cross, since there is not a more vulnerable target than a man crossing a river. Consequently, we crossed one at a time, fortunately without any incident. The river made a gentle curve that ran through a narrow defile where it had cut through the softer rock of a ridge, which we traversed, the slope so steep that it required us to switch back and forth. Nearing the top, we slowed, repeating the process of inching up so that just our eyes were able to see over, until the country beyond lay in our view. What we saw was not heartening, to say the least. Beyond this ridge was a narrow valley, where the river left the defile and flowed through it. Rising steeply from the opposite bank of the river was a flat-topped hill, on which sat a good-sized fortified position, though at that moment we were too far away to tell if it was just a hillfort or a complete town. Although we were unable to tell what the walls were made of, we could see that they were very tall; how much was wall and how much was part of the hill we would not know until we got closer. While we watched, we could see tiny figures rounding around the base of the hill out of sight, and I guessed that these were the stragglers from the Moesian army, meaning that whatever entrance there was to the place was on the far side. Because of its location, there was no way we could effectively sneak around to do a thorough scouting of the place without being seen. First, we would have to cross back over the river, which did not look possible to do up in the defile, the terrain simply too rugged. Descending the ridge to cross the valley floor, we would be spotted immediately if we were to try to circle around on the opposite side. We sat in silence for several moments before Balbus finally said what we were all thinking.
“That is going to be a right bastard of a job.”
“That it is,” I agreed.
“Maybe Crassus will change his mind once he sees this place,” Scribonius suggested.
“He might,” I said, but I was doubtful.
He had seemed adamant to teach Runo and the Moesian people a sharp lesson. Taking this place would surely do it. The only question in my mind was whether or not
he would wait for the rest of the army before trying to assault this place.
“We haven’t seen the other side,” Novanus said. “It might not be as strong as this side looks.”
“Let’s hope so.”
Knowing that we had seen all we could at that point, I told the others it was time to head back to Crassus and the Legion. We were about to descend back down the ridge when suddenly Balbus, who was taking the lead, pulled up short, causing a shower of rocks to cascade down the slope, making the horses nervous.
“Pluto’s cock,” he swore, pointing across the river to our right.
It took a moment before I caught movement and once I was able to focus, I saw that it was a small group of horsemen, riding hard across our front on the far side of the river. They had just become visible because a clump of trees along the riverbank had obscured my view, which had also hidden their pursuers for a brief span. My mind was just starting to register that the small group consisted of four men when a much larger group burst into view from behind the trees.
“That’s Maxentius!” Novanus exclaimed.
After watching a moment, I saw that he was right. Maxentius had been riding as his main horse a chestnut-colored mare, his spare horse a jet black, and it was this black horse that Maxentius was frantically whipping as he and his comrades tried to outrun their pursuers. None of them were leading their spare horses, and I assumed that they had been abandoned once the chase started. Their pursuers were clearly Moesian, and also were clearly better horsemen than the men they were after.
“Why are they headed in that direction?” Scribonius wondered.
I thought I knew.
“I think they wanted to run into us and double their numbers.”
“Lot of good that would do. There must be 40 or 50 men after them!”
Scribonius looked at me, dismay plainly written on his face.
“What do we do?”