RETRIBUTION

by Anthony Riches

  He leaned back again with a faint smile, waiting for the other man to respond.

  ‘That’s hardly—’

  ‘Fair, First Spear? Were you at the first battle of Cremona? As I’ve heard it, recounted to me by a man who observed the matter at close quarters and whom you will meet soon enough, the Twenty-first lost its eagle to the First Classica, a legion composed entirely of marines from the fleet at Misenum, recruited by Nero for his abortive attempt to expand the empire’s boundaries in the east. They offered you a trap into which you obligingly put your head, they cut off that head, they stole your standard and, were it not for the Batavians we’re now being sent to subjugate, would have kept it long enough to plunge you all into the deepest possible shame.’ Pugno stared back at him in silence. ‘I know. It still hurts. It hurts worse than the second battle of Cremona, despite the fact that you were on the losing side there too, because at least there you didn’t have to deal with the ignominy of having your eagle handed back to you by headstrong barbarian mercenaries like the Batavians. Perhaps putting them down will help to assuage your wounded pride. Perhaps participating in a successful campaign in Germania will help to put this legion back on the pedestal it occupied until not very long ago, that of the proudest, the most blood thirsty and positively the deadliest of the emperor’s legions, ferocious in battle to the point of savagery. And I’m sure that you can be a pivotal force in restoring that lost pride. So tell me, First Spear, is my legion ready to fight? Ready to fight and win, that is?’

  Pugno visibly swallowed his anger.

  ‘It is, Legatus. The Twenty-first musters three thousand, seven hundred and ninety-eight men, all of whom are ready to march at your command and fight for the legion, the emperor and our gods whenever, wherever and however you direct.’

  ‘Good. We’ve been directed to join an army group under the emperor’s son-in-law Quintus Petillius Cerialis, with orders to clear the lower reaches of the Rhenus, a force initially consisting only of this legion and a legion’s strength of auxiliaries, but to be joined in due course by the Second Classica, Sixth Victrix and Tenth Gemina from Hispania and the Fourteenth Gemina from Britannia. Otho’s former general Gallus has been offered a chance to redeem himself by restoring order to the upper reaches of the river with four other legions, but we’ll have the bulk of the fighting to do from the look of things. Legatus Augusti Cerialis’s orders are to crush this rebellion so completely that no Batavian will ever consider raising a sword against Rome for a thousand years to come.’

  Still simmering at the mention of the legion that had shamed his men at Cremona, Pugno nodded at the news.

  ‘Four legions ought to have the measure of that barbarian scum. And doubtless my men will be delighted to share a camp with the First Classica’s sister legion.’

  The legatus smiled.

  ‘I’m sure they will, given those marines will be equally delighted to have the chance to remind you what their brothers of the First Legion did to you last year. And you can point out to your fellow centurions that any man caught provoking trouble with any other legion will have the skin flogged off his back in front of the entire Twenty-first, without exceptions, excuses or any hope of clemency. Let’s save all that pent-up fury for the battlefield, shall we?’

  He looked meaningfully at the door, and, taking the hint, Pugno stood, drained his cup, saluted with the same exuberance and left the office. Nodding at the punctilious salutes of the legionaries he passed as he walked out into the camp, he made his way to the centurions’ mess, where the men who commanded the Twenty-first’s other nine cohorts were waiting for him.

  ‘Give me a beaker of wine.’

  He raised the large cup, muttering their ritual toast.

  ‘Blood and glory.’

  Sinking half the contents in a single swallow, Pugno looked round at their expectant faces.

  ‘The new legatus? He’s just like every other senior officer I ever met. He served me a drink in a cup so small that I couldn’t get one of my balls into it. Not even one of your balls, Quintus.’

  The recipient of the tried and tested insult raised a jaundiced eyebrow but refrained from comment, knowing from their long service together that this was not a moment to hand his superior a return dose of the rough humour he was dishing out.

  ‘So he’s careful with the wine. What about the man himself?’

  ‘He’s an arrogant bastard. He took pleasure in reminding me about losing our eagle at Cremona, and effectively told me that since we were shamed by a collection of nautical arse-pokers, we’d better fucking well find a way to get our pride back or we’ll be biting the mattress for the rest of our careers. He also told me that we’ll be marching alongside the Second Classica and two other legions at some point in the next few months when we go north to teach those uppity Batavian cunts a lesson, and that he’ll have the back off any man caught fighting with their men, no matter what the provocation.’

  Another of his officers grinned widely.

  ‘He sounds like a right bastard.’ He looked around the circle of men gathered around their senior centurion. ‘So he’s a perfect fit for the Twenty-first, right?’

  Pugno nodded, swallowing the rest of his wine and holding the beaker out for a refill.

  ‘Totally.’

  Marsaci tribal land, January AD 70

  ‘You animal!’

  The voice speaking to Claudius Labeo was weak, its tone quavering, but when he turned to see who was speaking he found the old man’s eyes were alive with hatred. Disdaining to notice the spears whose shafts were preventing him from approaching the younger man any closer, his slightly stooped figure was stiff with anger.

  ‘If I were thirty years younger then these two fools would already be cooling corpses, and you’d be face down in a puddle of your own blood, you piece of shit!’

  Labeo looked the old man up and down, nodding his understanding.

  ‘And if our desires all came true then the poorest of men would ride horses, but the sad fact is that the world is as it is. Take him away.’

  ‘No! You can listen to me for a moment, Claudius Labeo!’

  Labeo nodded at his men.

  ‘I suppose he has the right to speak his mind, given what we’re doing to his village. So you know who I am?’

  Pushing the spears away the old man stepped forward, eyes blazing with anger, ignoring the fact that both of Labeo’s bodyguards had lowered the points of their weapons to within inches of his back.

  ‘Yes, I know who you are. Claudius Labeo, once the prefect of the First Batavi Horse, now condemned as a traitor to your tribe. And apparently determined to prove that accusation true, but not by attacking your own people. Instead of confronting the Batavi, and facing the ire of men trained to fight, you take your revenge upon the Cananefates and we of the Marsaci, who lack the strength to stand up to your band of renegades and traitors. Stories of your bloody progress across the land have been reaching us for weeks, of farms and villages burned out, food pillaged and families left starving, forced to depend on the charity of those of their neighbours who escaped your attentions. I hoped not to see this day but when the smoke rose in the south this morning I knew it would only be a short time before your boots defiled our fields.’

  ‘And so you sent your people away with the bulk of your grain?’ The elder stared at Labeo in silence. ‘And you’ll keep the secret of whatever little hidey-hole they’ve run to no matter what we do to you, won’t you?’ He shrugged. ‘I’m not interested in persecuting the people of your tribe, old man. This isn’t about vengeance on the Batavi or on your tribe for supporting them in this war with Rome. This is war, old man, and in a war a man finds a way to encumber and impede his enemy, any way he can. Any way. I was falsely accused of harbouring ambitions to be king of my tribe, an accusation made ridiculous by the fact that the man making it has already effectively taken that power onto himself, and made that accusation as a means of having a potential restriction on his power removed. Kivilaz exiled me
to live among the Frisii people, but they were no keener to keep me prisoner than I was to be held by them, and we reached an accommodation soon enough. They fear an independent Batavi, you see, and view my people as a potential threat to the freedom they won from Rome in the time of the emperor Tiberius. They look at the Cananefates, and the Marsaci, and they see vassals to the Batavi. They imagine how the men who lead my tribe could see them as another potential client state, contributing their strength to that of the Batavi. And so they freed me. I rode east, a single unremarkable man on horseback, keeping to the quiet ways and travelling at night when possible, and I found my way to a legion camp where I was faced with the very men I had betrayed while pretending to serve as a loyal ally of Rome. Roman generals, men swift to take revenge for the empire. And yet I did not find myself choking out my last breaths on a cross.’

  The old man snorted derisively.

  ‘A pity. But when you do find yourself nailed up, look for me in the front row of spectators.’

  Labeo laughed softly.

  ‘That won’t happen. Rome may be swift to take her vengeance, but she’s nothing if not pragmatic. You see, I might have changed sides on the battlefield, and led my men to attack an auxiliary cohort, but unlike my former brother-in-arms Kivilaz, I never raised a spear against Rome herself. No legionaries died as a result of my actions. No defiance was offered to any Roman. And no Roman fortress was insulted. And when I pointed these facts out to Legatus Vocula, commander of the legions facing the Batavi, and told him what it was that I might do for Rome, he was swift to see my point. He freed me, and appointed me to command the frustrated men of the Batavi, the Cananefates, the Tungri, and yes, of your own tribe too, with the instruction to cause as much disruption to the Batavi’s ability to wage war upon Rome as possible.’

  ‘Traitors!’

  The old man spat on the ground at Labeo’s feet, but the rebel leader only smiled back at him.

  ‘You do realise what will happen, don’t you? Rome will march legions north from all over their empire to confront this piss-pot of a rebellion. Yes, Kivilaz has managed to besiege two half-strength legions in the Old Camp, although from what I hear he’s lost thousands of men knocking fruitlessly at their door, and yes, he has another three equally weakened and dispirited legions on the defensive further south, but all that matters not one little bit. The new emperor will gather every man that can be spared, forty or fifty thousand of them at a guess, and he will send that army north to deal with the Batavi in as brutal and efficient a manner as possible, under a commander who will have little fellow feeling for your tribes and a reputation to enhance. So if you think my few hundred men represent the worst that Rome can do to your people, think again. Ten legions will take a lot of feeding, and unlike my men, the legionaries who will subjugate your people will not observe my strict orders for no woman or child to be misused. And no hiding place will safeguard your people, not with thousands of eager men who haven’t seen a woman for months flooding your land.’

  The old man stood in silence, digesting Labeo’s words.

  ‘But enough of that. Perhaps Kivilaz will see sense, and surrender on terms that leave the peoples of our tribes in peace. After all, he’s a rational man. Or rather he was, before all this enmity between my people and Rome came about. Perhaps we can go back to the old relationship, if matters haven’t gone too far. But in the meanwhile I’ll go on doing whatever I can to make the point to you all, you who live far from Batavodurum, and who see the war with Rome as a distant matter, of no interest other than in that your menfolk form the point of the Batavi spear, that this war is real. And that it will come to you in all its terrible majesty sooner than you think. Spread the word.’

  2

  Germania Inferior, January AD 70

  ‘That’s no way for a man to die.’

  Levonhard pointed grimly at the carrion-picked corpse of what had evidently been a well-built man before his death.

  ‘Dead for a week, and he still looks better than you do.’

  The strikingly ugly soldier shook his head at his comrade Adalwin, his grimace displaying a disturbing assortment of teeth set in a face that had been known to repulse even the most eager of prostitutes at close quarters.

  ‘Not funny, Beaky, not seeing what they did to him. Put yourself in that poor bastard’s boots and then try to make it amusing.’

  Tied naked to a tree, his arms had been pulled around the trunk behind him to their furthest extent before his hands had been nailed to the living wood at the wrist, the barely protruding iron nail heads evidence that whoever had punished him had intended for him to die in that position. A dozen such grisly remnants lined the road south, barely a mile from the deserted Roman fortress at Gelduba, every one of them picked clean to the bone by carrion birds and animals. Egilhard shook his head in disbelief as he imagined the horror of their last hours.

  ‘That’s why.’

  He gestured to a daubed warning that had been painted onto the tree’s trunk above the last corpse in the line.

  ‘Latrones?’

  ‘It’s Latin for “robber”.’ Alcaeus was marching alongside Draco’s horse, and he waved his vine stick at the surrounding countryside to emphasise his point. ‘The Romans burned out every farm across a ten-mile front as they came north to relieve the Old Camp, which meant that anyone with money fled to the nearest settlements while their slaves were left to fend for themselves. Some of them fled too, and the remainder are living in the ruins of their farms, eating whatever they can salvage from the wreckage or steal from their neighbours. There’s a war of sorts being played out here, a dirty little war in the fields and hedgerows with only a few men on either side, and it’ll be the cleverest of them who will come out on top. I’d imagine this lot never even saw the men who nailed them up here coming for so many of them to have been taken alive. Captured while they slept, perhaps.’

  ‘We used to see the same thing in Britannia, during the conquest.’ Draco spoke without taking his eyes off their objective, the wooden walls of the empty fortress rising high over the flat farmland that surrounded it on all sides. ‘As the Britons retreated they burned whatever of their crops they couldn’t harvest and take with them, rather than let us have them, not realising that we had a constant supply of grain from across the sea. Every mile we advanced was just as bloody as that …’ he gestured back over his shoulder at the human remains arrayed along the roadside, ‘men accused of collaborating with us, or of theft from communal stores, or simply the settling of old scores when the opportunity presented itself. We’ll see worse, before this war’s done.’

  When the column reached the fortress he climbed down from the horse, pulling his staff from its straps and leaning on it to take the weight off his weaker leg.

  ‘Keep your men out here, Hramn, I want to see the place as they left it, not with hundreds of soldiers climbing over it and getting in my way.’ The prefect nodded silent understanding and Draco turned to Alcaeus. ‘Centurion, perhaps you could send a few men in with me, just in case there are looters hiding in there?’ He pointed to Egilhard. ‘This fine young man here and a few of his men would be perfect. No more than a dozen spears though, I don’t need the distraction.’

  ‘What is it you’re looking for?’

  The veteran looked at Hramn and shook his head.

  ‘I don’t know. Anything that will provide us with intelligence as to what the Romans will do next would be welcome, or perhaps give us some clue as to how they were warned that you were about to attack? I will simply follow my instincts and see what I can find.’

  Alcaeus nodded to Egilhard.

  ‘Take your old tent party and make sure that Prefect Draco isn’t interrupted by unfriendly men while he’s searching for clues.’

  The young watch officer turned to Lanzo.

  ‘Bring your men and follow me, and be ready to use your spears.’

  He led them forward through the fortress gates, following Draco’s instructions to advance straight up
the central street to the imposing praetorium at the heart of the camp. The soldiers formed a line across the street and advanced with the caution of men who had seen action, and who understood that the blow that killed a man wasn’t always one he saw coming.

  ‘These men of yours, Watch Officer, some of them seem to bear a striking resemblance to you.’

  Egilhard looked back at the older man, seeing a spark of amusement on the veteran’s face.

  ‘My father, uncle and brother, Prefect.’

  The older man inclined his head in evident respect.

  ‘Your family makes a great contribution. It is to be hoped that this war with Rome can be resolved before we suffer any more disasters like the one that happened here.’

  Egilhard turned away to resume his overseeing of the tent party’s careful advance, but to his horror his uncle spoke without taking his eyes off the barrack blocks to his right.

  ‘I remember you, Prefect. I wasn’t much more than a lad at the battle of the Medui, but I’ll never forget the way that you and the prince led us up the hill into those Britons.’

  The veteran officer nodded.

  ‘And I remember you, Soldier Frijaz. A good officer knows every man under his command, their strengths and their weaknesses. Even then you were known for your fondness for drinking and gambling, and I presume nothing’s changed in that respect? Not that you’re alone in that urge to take risks, of course, it was Kivilaz who led us into the Britons in that bloody dawn, not me. He was always the bold one, the most likely to slip his collar and rampage forward in a blood rage if there was an enemy to hand, wasn’t he?’

  Shaking his head he muttered a terse comment to himself, the words so quiet that even Egilhard, standing alongside him, was uncertain as to what he’d heard, then looked at Frijaz, his face hard with certainty.

  ‘I’ve heard men saying that this war he started can only end one way, in disaster and defeat, and that may be true, if we lack the iron in our backs to keep them at bay, but we can never doubt that he took us to war to avert the threat of a Rome that was ever more overbearing and dictatorial. Question his methods all you like, Soldier Frijaz, but never his reasons.’