by Cass Morris
Any further discussion was forestalled by the arrival of a scouting party, racing in from the half-struck rows of tents outside. Their leader saluted Vitellius. “Sir! We’ve news.”
Vitellius’s heart jumped, but he knew that to rush would undermine his authority. So instead he nodded, then looked at the rest of the scouts. “See to the horses,” he told them. “They need food and water before we march. Now, then, Dorsus, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir.”
Internally, Vitellius sighed, glad to have gotten it right. With a thousand men reporting to him, he could not hope to remember all their names, but he tried to keep track of the centurions and the specialists. “Dorsus, what’s your news?”
“An enemy camp, sir,” the scout said. “Vettoni. Might be the same group that sent out those scouts we ran into upriver.”
“Where?”
“Not far. There’s a stream that feeds into the Tagus, and they’re a little ways up it. Either they don’t know we’re here, or they don’t much mind.”
“How many men?”
“Two hundred and odd.”
Vitellius nodded, then turned to the centurions who had gathered nearby, lured by the scouts’ return. “Assemble one cohort. The other should continue striking camp. I want the Edetani cavalry with me. They’re best at riding on these rough paths. I want four ready to bolt if we need reinforcements from the Arevaci infantry. Dorsus, stay and speak with me further. I want to know as much as you can tell me about the terrain.”
A chorus of “Yes, sir’s” echoed back at him, and they all dispersed to their duties. ‘Is this how Generals feel?’ Vitellius wondered if it was worth wearing an enormous plumed helmet and standing beneath a distinctive standard, both of which rather increased one’s odds of attracting a volley of sharp and pointy objects from the opposing side.
Dorsus sketched out a quick map of the nearby area for Vitellius, pointing out that the Vettoni were camped on a bluff near a sparse outcrop of forest, a little farther west of the river. “How dense is the forest there?” Vitellius asked.
“Nothing like Albina,” Dorsus answered. “We should be able to get through without dividing ranks.”
“Excellent. Then we can approach through the forest,” Vitellius gestured on the map, “rather than charging through open fields. Maybe take them a bit by surprise, and block their chance to retreat.”
Once the cohort was assembled, Vitellius knew that it was his duty to make some sort of speech. His throat felt dry. ‘Tribunes aren’t supposed to have to do this,’ he thought. ‘It wants a legate, at the least. There should be someone else.’ But there wasn’t, and even Mennenius was looking at him expectantly. Vitellius mounted his horse, rode to the front of the line, and decided to keep it simple. ‘At least I don’t have to pitch my voice very far.’
“All right, men!” he said. “Seems there’s some Vettoni bastards nearby who think they can rough up Aventan allies and not pay for their audacity. I intend that we show them different! We will show them how Aven defends its friends!” He paused, letting the men get a few good bellows out. Then, “I hear tell that one of their chieftains has proclaimed himself a king. Not just any king, but a god-touched king.” There was some murmuring at that. Aventans had no use for kings. “He claims he has divine right to slaughter innocents! To lay waste to fertile fields! And what do we think of that?” A chorus of booing. Vitellius caught Hanath’s eye, where the Arevaci and Edetani cavalry were mustered. “Our allies tell us this self-appointed god-king is a fraud! Will we let them be dishonored by his perversion?” A gambit, to get the men to cheer the Iberians, and Vitellius was not disappointed; the cohort shouted their willingness to stand by their allies. “Will we stand idly by and shame Mars with our reticence?” Again, a chorus of “No!”s. “Then let us march out and make these Vettoni regret their arrogance!”
The men cheered and stomped and rattled their shields, but as far as speeches went, Vitellius knew it would not be one for the annals. It had done its work, though, and put the fighting spirit into his men. ‘Look here, Mars,’ he thought as they rode out. ‘We are men of the Eighth Legion, and we go to battle in your name. Lend us the strength of your arms, the fire of your belly, the glory of victory. Look here and know us.’
* * *
Vitellius stood with the cohort’s signum, the pole-mounted emblem of their pride and strength, and watched the Vettoni come on and on, with better form than the northern tribes. But that troubled him little. Calix and the other centurions knew their business. These men were not much blooded, but they had seen action along the borders, and no amount of hellish screaming, mud-smeared faces, or glinting axes would make them break their lines. Not even coming face-to-face with the occasional female warrior disturbed them, not after watching Hanath and her spear. Vitellius’s lines held, and would continue to hold.
Still, it was unnerving, how many Vettoni seemed to be able to take blows and yet return for more. A man he would have sworn he had seen gutted would rise again, bleeding and howling, yet still able to fight.
By Vitellius’s calculations, their line should have broken in under a quarter of an hour. When the battle went past that, Vitellius had a chilling thought: the nature of Iberian magic, such as he knew of it, was rooted in blood. Aventans regarded it with a mix of fear and disdain, considering it inferior to their elemental system. ‘But what,’ Vitellius wondered, ‘if it somehow affects the fighters? If it gives them this power, to keep fighting when they should fall?’
Beneath that thought was another, more chilling: that this Iberian magic might border perilously close to necromancy. Vitellius had yet to witness such, but he had heard the rumors. ‘How could we fight that?’ Aventan magic could not even be used on the battlefield. ‘But the rules of their war-gods are different from those of Mars.’ How could the legion conquer troops rendered nigh-invincible by blasphemous magic?
But there was no time for that now, not while Vitellius had a battle he could win. If there was magic behind the Vettoni’s endurance, it finally wore out. Their line faltered, and as soon as Vitellius saw it start, he called out, “Wedge!” The troops reformed themselves into a penetrating shape, the better to force their way into the Vettonian ranks. After another moment, the Vettoni faltered entirely. A centurion drove his gladius deep into the stomach of one of their apparent leaders, and that set the rest to running. Vitellius raised a hand to signal to the cavalry to ride them down as they retreated.
Well-disciplined, the infantrymen stopped forward motion and held their position as soon as the cavalry took over. Only when the Vettoni were all dead or fled did Vitellius give the order to break ranks and fall to spoil. “Calix!” he called.
Calix turned, saluted, and anticipated Vitellius’s question. “I don’t believe we’ve lost any, sir, though we’ve a few wounded that will need tending to.”
“Good.”
“Should we head back to camp, sir?”
Vitellius was about to answer when something caught his eye: a faint tendril of smoke reaching above the hill beyond them. It had not been visible from their camp near the river. “Take the legionaries and return to camp with any prisoners,” he said. “Take them to Tribune Mennenius. The auxiliaries will come with me.”
As soon as the riders crested the hill, Vitellius saw the source of the smoke: a town, or what used to be one. No building was left whole; most were smoldering ruins of mud and thatch. Strewn through what had been streets, Vitellius saw bodies, some bloodied, some burned.
Hanath pulled her horse up alongside Vitellius. “This was an Arevaci town,” she said, her voice as cold as the north wind. Vitellius had stopped wondering at the fierceness of her loyalty to her adopted people, but the fury of it blazed in her pitch-dark eyes. That alone would not have harrowed Vitellius—he had seen skirmishes enough in Albina, knew the ugliness and the rank stench of death—but these were not soldiers. It took Vitellius mer
e moments to trot from one end of town to the other, taking in everything: a blacksmith’s tools strewn about a yard, one smeared with gore; torn cloth lying across a threshold; a woman’s body pitched half-over a fence; a lone bleating goat wandering aimlessly. ‘Civilians. Near enough to their own people . . .’ These things had happened with Aventans, of course, during the Truscan Wars, but that was two generations past, nothing Vitellius had ever witnessed. ‘It’s war. This happens in war.’ But Aventans didn’t kill civilians if it could be avoided; it was not only ignoble, but wasteful.
* * *
When Vitellius returned to the half-struck camp, he dismounted at the gate, marched straight to the quaestorium, where some half-dozen Vettoni prisoners had been taken. Calix was there, still spattered with the gore of battle but apparently unconcerned by it, as was Mennenius. “Vitellius,” Mennenius began. “What happened out—?”
“Later,” Vitellius said, not wanting to discuss the matter in front of the prisoners, just in case they understood more Truscan than they let on. “Calix, get information out of these dogs. Find an auxiliary who can understand the Vettoni dialect.”
“Yes sir,” Calix replied.
“If they won’t talk, flog them.” If the prisoners understood him, they showed little sign of it, staring defiantly back. Mennenius, on the other hand, had gone wide-eyed, bewildered at his friend’s sudden ferocity. With the scent of smoke still in his nostrils, Vitellius was in no mood for leniency or diplomacy. “Flog them, beat them, notch their ears, cut off their toes, I don’t care what you have to do, but bloody well do it. I want to know everything there is to know about their numbers and where the bastards are hiding. And if they haven’t talked by the time we’re ready to move, drag them behind the wagons, and we’ll try again when next we make camp.”
XXXIV
CITY OF AVEN
There were times Merula fantasized about killing her master.
She would never go through with it, of course. Not even Lady Latona’s favor could protect her from the consequences of such a transgression. She knew what Aventan magistrates did to slaves who even raised a hand to a citizen, and she quite preferred to live a long life with all limbs and extremities intact. But Merula had watched Herennius’s condescending indulgence towards his wife turn to cool disregard and now, it seemed, outright contempt. Since the Dictator’s death, he freely expressed the festering resentment that his wife’s association with Ocella had generated, and so Herennius had begun to test, with far more frequency, the spare ration of patience that Merula’s gods had seen fit to give her.
On a drizzly afternoon shortly before the Kalends of December, Herennius strode into the room where Merula and the Domina were embroidering. “Wife,” he barked. Ruddy color was high in his cheeks; he was either excited or angry about something, but Merula could not tell which. Latona took her time finishing a stitch, laying the work carefully in her lap, then looked up at her husband. “You will join me in my chamber. Immediately. Prepare yourself as is necessary.” As an afterthought, he jerked his head at Merula, “Leave that here.” Without waiting, he huffed in a circle and left the room.
Sighing, Latona rose and handed her needlework to Merula. Merula stuffed it hastily in a basket, trotting along behind Latona as she walked towards Herennius’s bedchamber. “Domina? Domina, do you need—”
“I think I can manage to undress myself without assistance, Merula, thank you.” The sigh remained in her voice, trailing resignation.
“Not what I am meaning,” Merula said. There was a twitch in her fingers, and she was acutely aware of the sensation of cool metal against her skin, where her knife was strapped to her thigh. “If he hurts you, Domina—”
But Latona shook her head. “It will be no more than uncomfortable, as always.” Her eyes flicked heavenward. “And I daresay I will not have to endure any discomfort for long.” She put on a falsely bright smile. “And who knows? If I get a child out of it, then it’s all for good.”
Merula was not sure of that. As there was nothing to be done for it, she had no choice but to leave Latona at the chamber door and bundle herself down to the kitchen. She had been sitting there for an hour, helping the cook, Caenis, to slice vegetables for a stew, when one of the other slaves, a slender Ionian woman called Philotis, came in sniffling. “What’s wrong?” Caenis said, without turning from the table where she was peeling onions.
“Dominus beat me,” Philotis said.
“Beat you?” Caenis asked, arching an eyebrow. Such would be unusual in the Herennian domus, where the steward ran a firm enough household that extreme corrections were not often necessary.
“He hit me,” Philotis said, her full lips turned in an exaggerated pout.
“What’d you do?”
Merula read naked indignation on Philotis’s face. “I didn’t do anything. Or fail to do anything, thank you very much. I was just in the wrong damn place when he was in the wrong damn mood.” She spat on the ground. That roused Caenis to look over her shoulder where Philotis’s words had not, and with a roll of her eyes, Philotis rubbed the damp spot out with her bare foot. “He hit Ivorcus today, too,” she added, “because he didn’t think his toga had been properly starched. His foul temper is showing.”
Caenis shrugged. “Could be worse. I know perfectly well you haven’t had a real beating since you entered this house, and even if the Dominus ordered it, old Tembri is so weak it’d feel like a tickle. What’s a slap here or there?”
“Easy for you to say,” Philotis sniffed. “He never hits you.”
“It’s a stupid man who hits the slave who makes his food,” Caenis said, with a little laugh. “But don’t go thinking I’ve never felt the back of a master’s hand. My last, he was a devil for it, damn near every day. At least he was too busy fooling around with the pretty boys to meddle with me, so I thanked the gods for giving me tits instead of a prick.” She snorted derisively. “You can stay in here and sulk if you like, but make yourself useful.”
Still looking aggrieved, Philotis plunked herself down on a stool next to Merula and started shucking peas. “I’ve had my fill of it, I don’t mind telling you,” she said, “and in another year or so, I expect I’ll have enough saved up to buy myself from him, and see if anyone ever lays a hand to me again.”
Caenis snorted. “There’ll always be someone willing to take on that job, I’m sure.”
Philotis pointedly ignored her. “What about you, Merula?” Philotis asked. “Are you saving up?”
Before Merula could do more than shrug, Caenis chortled, slapping her hands against her thighs. “What should she want freedom for? So she can give up her nice, cushioned cot in the Domina’s bedroom and go live in a tiny fifth-floor insula with three other freedwomen?” Caenis shook her head. “It’s not worth it, my honeys. I know. My brother, he saved for his freedom, and it’s gotten him nowhere good. He can vote, but his vote means nothing.” Another snort. “Head Count, urban tribe, who cares? He makes money, but it all goes to pay for the shithole he lives in. And the food he eats now!”
“Maybe we’re not all as stupid as your brother,” Philotis said, though she proved her own intelligence by muttering it too low for Caenis to hear. She cleared her throat, then said louder, “Even if my own prospects weren’t good—and I think I could do quite well working for a seamstress, thank you very much—I want my children to be born free.” She elbowed Merula, looking for support. “Don’t you think that’s better?”
Merula had been taken from her home in Phrygia so young that she could hardly call it to her memory in more than fragments of scent and sound. Still, she had to admit that, though free-living had done her parents little good, it would be different to be manumitted and bestowed with Aventan citizenship, as all freed slaves were. “Better opportunities, I am thinking,” she allowed.
“There. See? Merula agrees with me.” Caenis’s eyeroll indicated what she thought of that. “What
would you do, then?” Philotis asked.
Merula had given the matter some thought, all too aware that, though her life with Vitellia Latona was easy enough, should the domina die—as women did, all the time—her prospects would be far better as a freedwoman than as a slave. The trouble was that her desire was nothing she could voice to someone like Philotis, so she only shrugged. “Find work. I am having skills enough.”
In truth, Merula had been around Aventan society enough for some of it to have rubbed off on her, particularly the instinct for turning a profit. It had occurred to her that her mistress had hit upon something potentially useful, in training a female bodyguard, and Merula thought that she could earn fair wages teaching others to do as she did—a sort of ludus, like the gladiators had. It was an outrageous notion, she knew, but the idea did make her smile.
“What was it got Dominus so upset, anyway?” Caenis said. “Think he’ll stay angry through dinner? I may need to change the menu.”
Philotis smirked. “Best find some larks, then,” she said. “I heard him and the domina screaming at each other before he came out and slapped me for having the nerve to clean the atrium. Apparently the dominus’s manhood failed him at the critical moment. He blamed the domina. He yelled, she yelled. Then I heard a crash, something breaking, and then he stormed out and hit me.”
Merula made a little hissing noise under her breath, then cursed a streak in her native Phrygian. Though neither Caenis nor Philotis could understand the words, her tone implied enough for Caenis to glare at her. “He can do with her what he likes,” Caenis said. “She’s as much his property as you or I, but she gets far greater compensation for it, so I won’t be shedding too many tears for her fate.”
Merula rose. “I should see to her. And you,” she said, glaring at Philotis, “I should cuff you myself for not telling me when you first come down.” She bounded up the stairs to the main level of the house, glad for her own sake that she did not encounter Dominus Herennius on her way.