RETRIBUTION

by Anthony Riches

  ‘A bit of water? I very much doubt that it’ll cause us too much difficulty, Legatus. Once we get to grips with them, that rabble will wish they’d put a few dozen miles between us rather than waste their time damming the river to make the ground a bit softer. Four legions ought to make swift work of this.’

  Longus nodded, looking along the length of the line that Cerialis’s army presented now that fresh forces had arrived from elsewhere in the empire as directed by Consul Mucianus.

  ‘I must say that the army does look pretty much unstoppable. The Fighting Fourteenth Legion, named as blessed by Nero himself. The Victorious Sixth, again named by Nero for gallant service. And the Second Rescuers, marines like the men who proved your legion’s match at Cremona. Added to our own strength this must surely be a terrifying prospect for the Batavians, don’t you think?’

  ‘Of course, Legatus.’ Pugno’s mouth tightened to a white-lipped line. ‘Walk with me, Centurion Antonius?’

  The two men strolled along the legion’s line, Pugno raising his vine stick in salute as his officers snapped their centuries to attention with brisk commands.

  ‘The Fighting fucking Fourteenth? What have they ever had to do over the last ten years, other than turn up too late to fight at Cremona? It’s their fault these uppity German bastards got too big for their boots in the first place! The Victorious Sixth? Named “victorious” by Nero for what, I ask you? They’ve been sat on their backsides in Spain for the last fifty years with nothing better to do than scratch their holes and toss each other off. And the Second Rescuers? Another collection of naval arse-worriers like their brothers of the First, who, I should point out, we gave a total fucking after they’d been lucky enough to capture our eagle. Cunts.’

  He paused, raising an interrogatory eyebrow at Antonius’s smile.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The legatus only drew attention to their alleged prowess to annoy you. I think it’s all a bit of a game to him.’

  Pugno shook his head in disgust.

  ‘And that’s all very well for him, he’ll be off back to Rome faster than a legionary makes for the whorehouses on payday, once we’ve finished them off, and so will Cerialis, eager to get his nose right up his father-in-law’s arse and his cock up every matron, virgin, whore and stray dog that fancies a piece of war hero. Whereas we’ll be left here to make sure they don’t get any more bright ideas about—’ Trumpets sounded from the rear of the Roman line, the signal the legions had been waiting for. ‘And there’s the order to get on with it. Come on, let’s get our feet wet and get this over with.’

  Drawing his sword he signalled to his trumpeter to sound the advance, grinning at Antonius as the massed horns of four legions split the air with their raucous blare.

  ‘Twenty-first Legion, at the march … follow me! Blood and glory!’

  The entire Roman line was moving, the legions advancing out across the battlefield’s marshy expanse at a walking pace intended to minimise the legionaries’ effort as they pushed through water that varied between ankle and knee deep, individual soldiers staggering, and in some cases falling, into the stinking, stagnant pools as they tripped over tussocks of marsh grass beneath the surface. With a sudden wail of iron flight fins carving the air, a volley of artillery bolts flickered across the space between the Batavi line and the advancing legions, the missiles punching holes in the closely packed Roman ranks. The waiting Batavi soldiers cheered at the sudden discomfiting of their opponents while the legionaries trudged on through the marsh, driven forward by their officers, their pace increasing as they sought to get to close-quarters with the waiting enemy rather than tolerate the lash of the artillery that had been taken when the Old Camp fell. Pugno and Antonius both turned their heads at the shouts and splashes as a section of the Sixth Legion’s line blundered into a patch of deeper water, iron-clad legionaries suddenly finding themselves floundering perilously close to being out of their depth, a potential death sentence to men carrying forty pounds in armour and weapons.

  ‘Keep moving! Let’s get at them!’

  Pugno led his men forward, eager to get onto firmer ground and turn his legion’s fury on the Batavi line, but as the Twenty-first’s soldiers splashed closer to their enemy they found that the submerged ground beneath their feet had been littered with deeper pits, individual soldiers suddenly sinking up to their armpits and having to be pulled out of the water by the men alongside them. As the legion closed to within twenty paces the defenders began to hurl abuse down at them from their vantage point on the higher ground, Pugno’s eyes narrowing as he bellowed an order at his men.

  ‘Twenty-first Legion, attack with spears!’

  At Pugno’s bellowed command, the legion’s front rank raised shields made heavier by water soaked into their layered wooden board, readying themselves to advance into spears’ reach and take their weapons to the waiting enemy. But as they went forward to engage the Batavi line, their leading ranks blundered into a trench cut in front of the enemy line, unseen beneath the water, having to be pulled back onto firm ground by the men behind them. The legionaries floundered as the Germans took the chance for which they had been waiting and volleyed spears down at them.

  ‘We’ve walked into a trap, First Spear! We need to pull back!’

  Pugno snarled defiance at his legatus, still mounted at the rear of the legion’s line despite the fact that he was presenting a perfect target to the enemy bolt throwers.

  ‘Never! The Twenty-first goes forwards, not backwards, and I won’t be the …’

  He fell silent as the crew of a portable scorpion manhandled their bolt thrower out of the Batavi line and pointed it directly at Longus, readying themselves to loose its heavy metal-tipped arrow, knowing all too well that the weapon’s missile would punch clean through his superior’s bronze armour and take his life in an instant. Just before the hard-faced Germans released their missile, a bolt launched from the legion artillery line two hundred paces behind them smashed into the weapon, splintering its wooden frame and releasing the massive energy its crew had wound into its tightly stretched cord. The heavy string whipped out and carved a bloody line across the face of the man behind it, sending him reeling back with a scream, blood pumping through hands raised to explore the source of his sudden, agonising pain.

  The mounted officer stared at the carnage, white-faced at his close escape. He pointed across the battlefield, and Pugno realised that the Germans were mounting attacks along their line, stepping out where the water was shallower and taking advantage of their nimbleness where the legionaries facing them were made slow and cumbersome by the weight of their armour and the water through which they were wading.

  ‘They’re killing our men, First Spear! And they would have killed me, if not for the intervention of the gods! This will be a massacre unless we do something! Have your trumpeter sound the retreat!’ The astounded centurion stared at him for a moment, and Longus leaned out of his saddle with a flash of uncharacteristic fury. ‘You heard me, Pugno! Do it! Or I’ll find another man who will!’

  After a moment’s delay, the two men staring at each other in a direct clash of wills, Pugno turned to his trumpeter and gave the order, having to repeat it such was the man’s surprise. As the legion’s horns took up the signal, and the Twenty-first’s soldiers started to fall back with expressions of grateful disbelief, Antonius realised that the entire army was backing away from the trap into which their commander had thrust them. Men continued to fall to the captured enemy artillery as they struggled backwards through the marsh’s filthy water, although to Antonius’s trained eye the Germans were suffering equally badly under the lash of four legions’ combined bolt throwers, as crews labouring under the lash of their captains’ roared orders subjected them to a constant bombardment of bolts and heavy stones. Longus cantered away to find his superior, the two men falling into deep discussion as their horses splashed back through the marsh towards the army’s starting point.

  ‘This isn’t a defeat!’ Pugno sta
red at his friend in disbelief, his face a picture of misery and frustrated rage, but Antonius simply shook his head, his face set hard against any argument. ‘I mean it! If you stand in line in front of four legions’ artillery for long enough then you’re going to get torn a new one no matter how clever your choice of ground might be!’

  The veteran first spear looked back at the enemy line as another flight of bolts whistled over the legionaries’ heads and reaped a fresh crop of enemy warriors, shaking his head in rejection of his colleague’s attempt to soften the shame of his legion’s failure to stand face-to-face with their enemy.

  ‘This is a defeat! And it isn’t one I’m going to forget … or forgive!’

  The Old Camp, Germania Inferior, June AD 70

  ‘So what purpose did that serve?’

  Lanzo glanced wearily across the fire at Levonhard, shaking his head at the disgusted soldier.

  ‘You won’t give it up, will you?’

  The older man shrugged angrily.

  ‘And why should I? Why can’t I have an opinion on the things we’re told to do, and what results?’

  ‘Not if there’s any risk of you being overheard!’

  Levonhard laughed bitterly.

  ‘Risk of being overheard? The only people who are going to hear me are the other poor bastards who had to stand out under the Roman bolt throwers for half the day. I mean look at where we are, pushed so far to the edge of the camp that we might as well not be part of this army.’

  The men of the tent party stared vacantly into the flames for the most part, no one bothering to comment on his statement of what to them seemed obvious. Away to their left the men of the tribes were shouting threats and insults at the Roman camp, less than a mile distant, while in the gaps between their hoarse and drunken imprecations, the sound of singing could be heard, legion battle hymns and marching songs doubtless being sung to restore the spirits of the legionaries.

  ‘We stood waiting for the bastards to come back and attack us for hours, when it was obvious that they weren’t going to, all the while with their artillery chipping away at us while we did nothing better than present them with something to shoot at!’

  ‘It was the same for every man in the line. You can’t deny that.’

  The veteran soldier rounded on his watch officer with an expression of amazement on his flame-lit face.

  ‘No, it fucking well wasn’t! Have you forgotten that we had the Guard standing behind us all that time? Because we’re not to be trusted, of course, and not because those cowardly bastards just wanted to use us as human shields! Can anyone guess how many men of the Guard died today? Anyone? No?’ He looked around, knowing that every one of them knew the answer. ‘I met an old friend of mine who serves with them when I went to fetch the water, and even he couldn’t look me in the eye. Because the answer’s none. Not one. In fact the only casualty those fuckers have taken since Gelduba is a decurion who only died because he was stupid enough to fall asleep and let his prisoners kill him with his own sword!’

  The story of Bairaz’s death in the forest had provided the men of the cohorts with a good degree of grim amusement, although they had learned to keep it to themselves after one soldier who ventured an opinion publicly was given a punishment beating for his temerity.

  ‘And what are the odds that we’ll have to do all the hard work tomorrow, eh?’

  Frijaz came to life.

  ‘What do you mean, tomorrow?’

  Adalwin smiled sourly across the fire at him.

  ‘You and your brother were away getting the rations when your lad came round with the happy news that Kiv’s planning an attack tomorrow. We were going to let it be a surprise to you, but Ugly seems to have ruined th—’

  ‘An attack? A fucking attack? On four legions that we barely scratched today for all of the hard work Kiv had us do to build that dam?’ The veteran was suddenly furious, shaking his brother awake. ‘You hear that? We’re attacking tomorrow! Now that we’ve really pissed the Romans off, we’re going to try and beat them across ground that’s been flooded in order to prevent an attack!’

  Lataz stirred, yawned and stretched, blinking in the fire’s glow.

  ‘An attack. Right. Is that stew ready yet?’

  ‘Is the stew ready? Are you deaf? I said—’

  ‘I know. What you said. Brother.’ Lataz was speaking slowly and with deliberate emphasis. ‘I’m not stupid. But since there’s fuck all I can do about it, I thought I might as well fill my belly, get some more sleep and see what tomorrow brings when it’s tomorrow, rather than worrying about now. I suggest you do the same. After all, if today’s brilliant plan was such a disaster then tomorrow’s likely disaster might just turn out to be brilliant, eh?’

  The Old Camp, Germania Inferior, June AD 70

  ‘Well gentlemen, just because the day didn’t turn out the way we planned it doesn’t mean we didn’t learn a good deal from it.’

  The assembled legati and their senior centurions stood in respectful silence while Cerialis took a sip of the wine that he had had served as they gathered to consider the day’s events. To Antonius’s eye, having grown used to the army commander’s methods, it appeared almost as if their leader was challenging his officers to gainsay his sentiments, but no one spoke in the lengthy silence.

  ‘So, if nobody’s arguing with me on that point – not even our greatest fire breather …’ He shot a swift and sympathetic glance at Pugno, who had been uncharacteristically quiet since leading his men away from the death trap that the Germans had laid out for the legions, but if the first spear even noticed the gesture he did not deign to respond. ‘Then I’ll tell you why I’m less troubled at such an apparent defeat than you might expect.’

  He pointed at the map unrolled on the table before them.

  ‘The Old Camp represents the last piece of defendable land between here and the Batavian homeland. Once we have them off this high ground there is little to stop our superior numbers pushing them all the way back to their Island, where Civilis will at least be able to put a river between our two armies. He knows this, and so he set out a trap for us to fall into, an opportunity for me to blunder rashly in, in my usual manner …’ He raised an amused eyebrow at Longus, and Antonius realised what it was that the legatus had been saying to Cerialis during the long, slow trudge back to the battle’s starting point as the two men rode side by side. ‘In offering me battle on that ground, Civilis was presenting me with a baited hook, a hook that I very nearly took. That we escaped with casualties is probably due to two things. Firstly, the fact that we retreated when we did, and for that we can thank the quick thinking and selfless example of the most martially-minded centurion in the entire army.’

  He extended a hand to Pugno.

  ‘By his selfless example in accepting his legatus’s suggestion that he should pull the Twenty-first Legion back, despite his every instinct screaming to attack, First Spear Pugno showed the rest of the army what we had to do. We needed to swallow our pride and step away from an unwinnable fight, and thanks to Pugno we did. So thank you, Centurion, you have educated me in a way I could never have expected.’ The astonished centurion blinked, then tipped his head in reply, unable to speak so conflicted were his emotions. ‘And the second reason we got away with this error of judgement? The enemy, believe it or not, made their position too secure. By digging a ditch in front of their positions, which flooded and prevented us from coming to grips with them, they also denied themselves the chance to punish us as we retreated. Most men die in battle when the time comes for one army or another to turn and run, all the histories tell us that much, and that deep water prevented them from coming after us in sufficient numbers to turn our retreat into a rout. For which we can be grateful.’

  ‘So what now, Legatus Augusti?’

  Longus’s question was posed in respectful terms, but Antonius could sense its import, and the assembled officers seemed to hold their breath as Cerialis affected to consider the point.

  ‘
Now, Pontius Longus? Now I think we’ll give these barbarians an opportunity to find out what it feels like when an enemy takes your tactics and wields them against you. We threaten them just by being here, so tomorrow we’ll do just that – be here – and let them come to us. We’ll put the auxiliary cohorts in the shop window and leave the legions as a battlefield reserve, ready to exploit any opportunity Civilis leaves for us. Tell your men to sing their marching songs as loudly as they can and far into the night. I want these barbarians to be straining at their collars come the morning, eager to come and find out just how tenaciously Rome fights on the defensive. I know Civilis’s plan, gentlemen, indeed I believe that a blind man could deduce it. He intends to bleed us of our strength, until our legions are reduced to shells of their former selves like the First and Sixteenth, and I am forced to sue for peace on terms that effectively leave him on the Batavian throne and guarantee them their independence to make trouble and foster rebellion in Germania. And my answer to that is simple …’ he paused, looking around at his officers determinedly, ‘we bleed them. We tempt them onto our line and cut them to ribbons in the old-fashioned way. Tomorrow will be a day for grinding meat, gentlemen.’

  The Old Camp, Germania Inferior, June AD 70

  ‘We won. And yet …’

  ‘And yet we lost, Prefect Draco?’

  The elder nodded slowly, looking across the fire around which the tribal leaders had gathered.