by Jack Whyte
I was staring at him, but as I heard his words I knew he was right. I had taken charge, completely, not as Varrus the centurion-turned-tribune, but as Publius Varrus, councillor, citizen and leader.
"Yes," I said, "but I was outraged. I have to get to bed, Caius."
"And so do I, my friend. But I hope your outrage lasts. If it does not, I may have to find ways to renew it regularly. I like what it does to you."
I think Luceiia was asleep when I fell into bed.
VII
Lignus the carpenter had his moment of public infamy at the third hour of the following afternoon, when he was arraigned and brought before the full tribunal of the Colony Britannicus, held erect between two soldiers who were as big as he was. His head was almost entirely swathed in bandages and it was obvious to everyone assembled in the main courtyard of the villa — and the crowd included every man, woman and child in the Colony — that he was in great pain. His suffering brought him little pity, however, for his only son still lay comatose in the villa's sick bay, and the spectacle of his bruised and abused wife and pregnant and beaten daughters had scandalized the entire community.
The justice dispensed to him was swift and quickly summarized: In that he was responsible for brutalizing and savagely beating his own son, crippling him and leaving him in a condition closer to death than life, and in continuing danger of suffering death from the abuses he had undergone; and in that he physically chained, constrained and incestuously impregnated one of his own daughters and cohabited incestuously with the other against the laws of God and man; and in that his actions and the consequences of those actions occasioned a conflagration that endangered and might have affected the entire Colony, he, Lignus the carpenter, was proscribed and banished from the lands entailed by the Colony under penalty of instant death, to be executed immediately upon his being discovered in future within the bourn of the Colony or any of the lands owned by or attached to it. His wife and daughters were absolved of any guilt or willing complicity in his atrocious conduct and were offered the option of remaining in the Colony and living by what work would be provided for them after his departure. They accepted the offer without hesitation.
There was a corollary to this verdict, however, made in recognition of the fact that the man was physically unable to travel at the time of sentence. He was to be lodged, under guard, within the Colony for a maximum of twenty-one days, or until Cletus the physician pronounced him fit to travel, whichever should be shorter. After that he would be escorted to the boundary of the Colony by the high road to Aquae Sulis and there cast out.
The entire tribunal lasted less than half an hour, and it was a fitting end to a day that had seen some miraculous advances in the method of government of our Colony.
The Plenary Council had convened at the tenth hour, as scheduled. By then, the word had gone out among the members who had not been present the night before, and the new ideas had fallen on fertile ground. It seemed there were very few councillors who had not been reflecting, with varying degrees of worry, on the worsening situation in the town and cities of south-west Britain. In a fiery two-hour session, the councillors unanimously and immediately endorsed the initial decisions reached the previous night at the impromptu session. It took longer, however, for them to agree in principle to an analysis and examination of Caius's suggestion that the Council be expanded and altered to include the guidance and counsel of women in specific areas, mainly affecting the morale, governance and well-being of the colonists and their domestic conditions. This was a chewy mouthful for the councillors to swallow, but the majority ended up admitting that, if the guiding principles of such involvement were well thought out and disciplined, and properly administered, the idea could have much merit. Luceiia and three other women were elected by the councillors to consult with the Plenary Council on how these matters might be conceived and achieved.
The assembled colonists, for their part, roared their approval of every suggestion put forward by the Council that day, and when Cletus delivered a report on the status of the boy Simeon, who was still unconscious, a silence filled with sympathy fell on the crowd and lasted for a long moment. When the public meeting was finally adjourned after the tribunal, very few people left the gathering place. Everyone wanted to talk about what had happened and what had been resolved during the day, and soon fires were being lit and food prepared, and the activities of the day took on a holiday atmosphere that lasted well into the evening.
Young Simeon regained consciousness just before sunset, to everyone's relief and great pleasure, most particularly his mother's, and Cletus ventured a qualified prognosis of eventual recovery, although the lad's broken leg was so badly smashed that he would probably hobble worse than I did for the rest of his life. That night, after a late supper, while Luceiia was supervising the bedtime of the eldest of our brood, Caius and I sat in companionable silence on either side of a blazing fire in his study. He was reading a letter that had arrived the day before from our friend Bishop Alaric, who was in Verulamium. I was mulling over the thoughts that had occurred to me after reading the same missive. Alaric had written about the latest escalation of enemy raids on all sides of the country. In what appeared to be a general response to an abrupt curtailment of the flow of funds from the Imperial Exchequer, he informed us, the Colonial High Command in South Britain had been recently forced, yet again, to cut back drastically on its policing duties. The news, while not surprising, had angered me. This nonsense of troop withdrawals and reallocations had been going on for several years now, and we were well aware of it. It was no secret that the garrisons had been pulled out of many of the minor forts, and we knew that, in spite of bureaucratic protestations of "interim measures only, pending the return of victorious forces from the continent," these moves were permanent.
From my own, personal perspective, the worst thing about all of that — apart from the legal ramifications of the loss of the punitive arm of the law, which had been causing us so much concern — was that many of these supposedly minor forts were strategically located and essential to the defence of outlying areas of the country. When the soldiers were withdrawn from these, there was nothing to prevent incursions by pirates and marauders.
The most glaring example of this we had seen was the closure of the main fort at Cicutio, in south-central Cambria, and the withdrawal of troops from Dolocauthi, to the north-west. Dolocauthi was the biggest gold mine in the Western Empire, and when the troops were withdrawn from there, the word spread quickly. A line of forts, joined by a high-quality road along the south side of the Cambrian peninsula, was still being maintained, to keep the seaborne Scots from Dolocauthi, but it was a poor second-best to a strong, garrisoned fort on the spot.
Dolocauthi itself did not interest me personally and would not had it been a thousand times bigger, but it had come to symbolize two things: the stupidity of the High Command, who decided in the first place to withdraw the garrison without shutting down the mines — no doubt seeking to placate carping, middle-level government officials — and the colossal stupidity of the Hibernian Scots, who knew no difference between a gold mine and an iron-ore pit.
Caius put down Alaric's letter and sighed, moving the taper back to the centre of his table. I watched him for a few moments before breaking in on his thoughts.
"What are you thinking about?"
"Oh, I don't know. Alaric's letter depresses me. I was thinking of garrisons, and the lack of them. For all the good it seems to do nowadays, my friend, the Garrison of Britain might as well not be here. Never enough men in any one place, and never enough time to arrive at where they ought to be before it's too late." He paused. "You know, Publius, there is something I've been meaning to ask you about for some time. Do you remember the horse you brought back from Glevum?"
"Of course." His question surprised me. I was amazed that he should remember.
Five years earlier, we had taken to sending our wagons north towards Glevum twice a year, to buy up ingots of iron and lead.
From Glevum, we would travel back to the Colony through Corinium and south through Aquae Sulis, gathering extra luxury items that were otherwise notably absent from our Colony. The return of the wagon-train from Glevum had quickly become a semi-annual event looked forward to with eagerness by everyone, until the word spread, within three years of our first such journey, that the garrisons had been withdrawn completely from the inland forts, and reduced in the coastal forts. Within the following year, Hibernians by the boatload were spilling into Cambria, searching for the fabulous gold mines of Dolocauthi. To the best of my knowledge, they never did find Dolocauthi, but they terrorized every miner in the country to the extent that the flow of iron into the Glevum markets had dried up completely.
That was a blow to us; to me personally. It meant I had to start looking elsewhere for my iron. It had been on the last of those Glevum journeys, about a year earlier, that I had found the horse Caius referred to.
We had been searching to the north of Glevum itself for pockets of iron production, and on a spring afternoon we crested a hill and saw a raid in progress on a farm in the valley below us. The fighting was over, if there had been any at all. There were raiders everywhere, and the flames were just starting to spread in the buildings. I sounded a call on my horn and led my men down the hill in a charge. The raiders saw and heard us coming, and they ran. There were three of us on horseback that day, and we pursued them, easily outdistancing our soldiers, who had no hope of catching them. Within a short space of time we were in bowshot range of the fleeing raiders, and we managed to drop half a dozen of them at no risk to ourselves before we ran out of arrows and had to turn back.
The only living being left on that farm had been a stallion, a heavy black with wild eyes. And he was alive only because of his wildness. Two other horses lay slaughtered. He alone had kept his distance. We chased him, those of us who were mounted, and finally managed to loop a rope around his neck and bring him back with us.
"What happened to it? It was a stallion, wasn't it?"
"Aye. And a fine one. I still have him, but he's too wild to ride."
"You mean he's in the stables? Here?"
"Well of course. Where else would he be?"
"Hmmm." His face assumed one of those strange Britannican expressions I had come to know so well and which, I knew from experience, normally resulted in an increased work-load for someone, usually me. His next words hinted eloquently of fermenting thoughts and yeasty processes occurring within his brain. "A stallion. Publius, what do you know of breeding horses?"
I looked at him, recognizing the tone and wondering what was coming next.
"Nothing, apart from the obvious. You need a stallion and a mare, and they handle the rest themselves."
"Nothing more?"
"What more could there be, Caius? It's natural."
"Publius, when I want a clown, I'll hire one," he snapped.
I shrugged, grinning at his short temper. "Pardon me. What's on your mind?"
"Adrianople," he said, mollified slightly by my ready apology. "Adrianople and Alexander of Macedon."
I waited for more, and when nothing was forthcoming I prompted him. "Forgive me, but I don't follow you. What connection is there between Adrianople and Alexander?"
"None, Publius, there is none. Not yet. Apart from the obvious, as you said to me. But my mind tells me there should be. Are you hungry? I could eat something."
"There are some pears there, on the table. Permit me." I rose and took the bowl to him, then watched as he selected one, took out a small clasp knife and began to pare the skin from it. He was obviously deep in thought, as was I, wondering about the "obvious" connection between Adrianople and Alexander that I had evidently missed.
"Varrus," he asked me after a few moments of silence, using his old, army tone, "what is the major difference between our cavalry and our foot-soldiers?"
I barely had to think about that. "Speed," I answered. "Speed and ease of manoeuvring."
"And which would you say are the better troops?"
"The infantry, naturally."
He looked up and smiled at me strangely. "Why? And why 'naturally'?"
I thought he was twitting me. "Are you serious, Cay? They are more dependable, more adaptable, more solid in every way."
"Why?"
I blinked at him, wondering where this discussion might be taking us. "For many reasons. What are you driving at, General?"
"Just answer the question, Varrus. Why more solid?"
I thought about it for several seconds. "Well, for one thing, infantry are more... permanent. They stay in the field longer and have the ability to prepare their own defences. Fortifications. They're more stable. They have fewer needs. A foot-soldier need only look after himself. A horseman has to look after his animal, too. And in the final analysis, infantry are a solid, unified force. Horsemen are individuals."
He barely gave me time to finish. "But you have just finished telling me that mounted troops have the advantage of speed and the ability to manoeuvre more quickly."
"Well... they do, under certain conditions. In hill country, a man on foot is far more dependable."
"If he holds the high ground."
"Aye." I nodded.
"Then what about Adrianople? Heavy concentrations of horse in that engagement wiped out an entire Roman army."
I shook my head. "No, that was a fluke, a trick. The army's commander must have been negligent in the first place."
Caius was frowning, shaking his head. "Do we know that, Publius? Really? I doubt it. There are no flukes in war. Trickery is a legitimate principle of warfare."
I shrugged, beginning to feel very mildly exasperated. "I don't see where this is leading us."
"You will. Tell me, what would you say was the difference between Alexander's cavalry and ours?"
Again I paused to think before answering. "Discipline, I suppose, if anything. And tactical deployment. Alexander refined his father Philip's tactics, which were already superb. But apart from that, the major difference was that the Macedonian cavalry was heavy cavalry of a kind that we don't use today. Big horses, carrying heavily armed men. All trained to operate in concert."
"Like hammers, Varrus?"
He had surprised me again. My mind jumped backwards, twenty-odd years, to the special unit, "the Hammers," that Caius and I had assembled to smash back the Caledonians after the Invasion of 367. I nodded, slowly. "Yes, I suppose you could say that. Like hammers. Or like one big hammer."
There was the vestige of a smile on his lips. "Now do you see what I'm thinking, Varrus?"
"I think I'm beginning to."
"Imagine the effect, Publius." His voice was excited. "Imagine the effect of a squadron, or even more, a cohort, of heavily armoured soldiers, mounted on big horses and trained to ride as a unit. Not skirmishers, Publius, no, nor mounted archers, but front-line troops — shock troops! Imagine a solid line of mounted spearmen riding at the gallop against a boatload of Saxons caught on land. Can you see it?"
I could. I could see it clearly and something stirred in my gut, but I had to be sure that I was seeing what he was seeing. "Spearmen? You mean with sarissas? The long, sixteen-foot spears Alexander's Companions used?"
"Why not? Or even axemen. But trained to fight together, as one force, like an infantry maniple. Could it be done?"
I was seeing a solid wall of charging men on enormous horses. "Why not? They would require a lot of training, but it could be done, if you had the horses." I stopped short, disappointment sharp in my breast over the death of my own sudden enthusiasm. "Unfortunately, we don't.
Not the kind of horses we would need — big, heavy brutes. They would have to be massive to carry heavily armed men. Ours just aren't big enough. And we would need so many of them! Hundreds."
He laughed aloud and rose to his feet. "We shall have them, Publius! We'll breed them! Big horses! By the hundred!"
"No, Caius, hold up!" I felt it my duty to interrupt, to bring him back to earth.
"That would take years!"
"Of course it will. No doubt of it, none at all!" His voice was fierce and jubilant. "But we have years, Publius! We'll start tomorrow. And the first thing we have to find is someone who has knowledge about horses, and I know just the man. You remember the bailiff who was tending Terra's villa when he bought it? Fellow called Victorex, or Victrix, or something? Terra told me his father used to run a hippodrome in Gaul. The son learned about horses as a child and was a horse physician of some kind. I'll have Terra send him over tomorrow, and we'll ask him what he knows of breeding. He knows horseflesh, from all accounts. He may just be our man. You, in the meantime, can concern yourself with finding out all you can about Alexander's methods."
I grimaced. "How will I do that? I know of his campaigns and his battles, and a little about his strategy. But there's little or nothing in our books about his actual tactics — how he deployed or trained his men. We Romans have never concerned ourselves with cavalry tactics of that kind."
"Not until now, my friend. Not until us."
"Anyway," I went on, "I don't like the sarissa idea. Those things were too cumbersome — sixteen-feet long and useless after the first charge. They had to drop them then, and use swords. I don't like that at all."
He nodded. "Nor do I. Find me some way of keeping hold of a spear so that it can be used after the first attack. Our men should be able to kill with it again and again, as often as is needed to win a battle."