Rome 3: The Eagle of the Twelfth

by M C Scott

  About the Book

  They are known as the Legion of the Damned . . .

  Throughout the Roman Army, the XIIth Legion is notorious for its ill fortune. It faces the harshest of postings, the toughest of campaigns, the most vicious of opponents. For one young man, Demalion of Macedon, joining it will be a baptism of fire. And yet, amid the violence and savagery of his life as a legionary, he realizes he has discovered a vocation – as a soldier and a leader of men. He has come to love the XIIth and all the bloody-minded, dark-hearted soldiers he calls his brothers.

  But just when he has found a place in the world, all that he cares about is ripped from him. During the brutal Judaean campaign, the Hebrew army inflict a catastrophic defeat upon the legion – not only decimating their ranks, but taking away their soul, the eagle.

  There is one final chance to save the legion’s honour – to steal back the eagle. To do that, Demalion and his legionaries must go undercover into Jerusalem, into the very heart of their enemy – where discovery will mean the worst of deaths – if they are to recover their pride.

  And that, in itself, is a task worthy only of heroes.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Legionary Organization

  Maps

  Foreword

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  I: Hyrcania, on the Caspian Sea, February, AD 57: In the Reign of the Emperor Nero

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  II: Raphana, Syria, Summer, AD 61: In the Reign of the Emperor Nero

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  III: Beth Horon, Judaea, November, AD 66: In the Reign of the Emperor Nero

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  IV: Caesarea, Judaea, Winter, AD 66–67: In the Reign of the Emperor Nero

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Also by M C Scott

  Copyright

  ROME

  THE EAGLE OF THE TWELFTH

  M. C. Scott

  To the memory of Rosemary Sutcliff,

  Best and Greatest

  FOREWORD

  THERE IS A generation for whom Rosemary Sutcliff’s seminal novel The Eagle of the Ninth is the benchmark by which all other historical writing is judged.

  It was our first taste of the ancient world, shaping images that have lasted a lifetime, and for many of us writing today it opened doors we had not known existed and asked questions for which we needed to find answers.

  Certainly, I would not be writing the books I now write had I not been so enthralled by Esca and Cub, had I not so badly wanted to know what happened in the warrior tests and who exactly were the wild, dancing priests with the new-moon horns on their brows. The Boudica: Dreaming series was my answer to this last question and the Rome series has brought me to the brink of writing my own ‘Eagle’ narrative.

  Sutcliff based her tale around the mythical disappearance of the IXth legion and the then recent find of a wingless legionary Eagle beneath an altar in southern Britain, but the point is that it was truly mythical – in reality, the IXth never lost their Eagle.

  By contrast, both Josephus and Tacitus provide us with details of a legion that did lose its Eagle without any information on how it was recovered. (We can be fairly certain that it was, for the simple reason that the XIIth was not disbanded and went on to serve under Vespasian and later Titus in the siege of Jerusalem.)

  If ever there was a fiction writer’s dream, this is it. But where Sutcliff was able to concentrate solely on the Eagle’s recovery, I wanted us – my readers and myself – to understand what it meant to the men of a legion for the Eagle to be lost. And so this novel, first and foremost, is Demalion’s; his are the eyes, the heart, the mind that guide us through the troubles of the XIIth and we need to see and feel his triumphs before we can understand his loss.

  For those of you who have come straight from Rome: The Coming of the King, please be patient – you will meet again in these pages the people you know, and find that story’s progression. But in order fully to understand the enormity of what happened to the XIIth legion, we must journey back to a time before Pantera sailed to Britain. Fear not; all threads will weave together in due course.

  I could not love thee, Dear, so much,

  Lov’d I not honour more.

  Richard Lovelace, To Lucasta, Going to the Wars

  Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

  Horace, Odes

  PROLOGUE

  Rhandaea, on the northern bank of the Murad Su, in the country of Armenia, October, AD 62

  THE LAST SHREDS of night held our backs. On either side, unscalable peaks held our flanks. Spread across the wide vale between, we, the XIIth legion, had the advantage of height against our enemy; not a great height, but enough that an olive placed on the stony ground would have rolled under its own weight down the four thousand cubits to the foot of the pass. Enough that when the sun’s first edge cut the horizon and poured light across the tens of thousands of foot and horse who made up the King of Kings’ Parthian army, we found ourselves looking down on to the tops of their helmets and they seemed to ooze towards us, thickly, like so much mercury poured into a dish; a river of shimmering metal, dancing under the sun.

  Drums sounded their advance, and their thunder was echoed by the roll of ten thousand hooves. They came faster than I had imagined. Too soon, the faces of our enemies became plain to see and the armoured heads of their horses turned the quicksilver to a darkling ocean with sheen-topped waves.

  The gust of wind brought us their stench: a blanket of horse-sweat and man-sweat so thick that we could have cut it with our knives and eaten it to fill the hollowness inside. My own sweat flashed cold across my back, and I reached for comfort to the horn settled at my left shoulder, the brass nestled by my ear, the ready places for my fingers. A spray of notes crowded my mind, ready to loose into the wild air.

  The sun edged up until it caught the first heights of our standards. I saw the raised fist of Jupiter reach for the first rays, folding the light into its majesty so that it blazed with a life all its own.

  I raised my hand to join it and the cheer that broke along the line was deeper than the enemy drumbeats, lasted longer, grew louder, and harder. It reached the oncoming cavalry and I saw them check in their advance, saw the horses pitch and stumble as they took the first rise of the hill.

  In that moment, I believed the gods were with us. From my right side, I
heard Syrion suck in a breath and hold it, and let it out in a word: Arianna, the name of his woman – one of his several women – spoken as a benediction, in heartfelt gratitude, as by a man who is granted his greatest wish.

  Syrion was the standard-bearer for our cohort, and no man deserved the honour more. He wore a muleskin, where others of his kind wore bear or wolf or leopard; for us, the mule spoke to our hearts of the time we had defeated a worthy opponent. He wore it for the first time now, and if it was the last, still, it gave us courage.

  On my shield side, my heart side, stood Heraclides, known as Tears, who had been born into wealth on Crete, and had grown expecting to prosper as the owner of a dozen vineyards until both of his parents died, whereupon he had been sent to live with an aunt in Socnopaios, who had given him up as a conscript in payment of tax, in lieu of her eldest son.

  Tears had wept for most of the first three months after he joined us, but he was too beautiful to be whipped for it and we had taken care of him and he had grown to be the best swordsman of our unit. He smiled at me now, and it was the smile of the young Apollo, or Zeus in his youth, readying himself for war.

  Ranged alongside were the other men of our unit: Rufus, Horgias, Sarapammon and Polydeuces, known as the Rabbit, for the single act of hiding in a hole one winter’s night, when we were camped in the Syrian mountains, with the IVth Scythians as our enemy.

  None of us was hiding now. Ablaze at last, as the standard was ablaze, bright in our armour, with our scarlet tunics aglow in the sun, we held a firm line and the need to fight shone from us, I think; our need to prove what we could do.

  I looked ahead again. The sun had flooded the pass now. Tribal banners in the coloured silks of the Parthian tribes wove across the oncoming tide in a clash of hues: jade and citrus, scarlet and emerald, cornflower, crimson, gold.

  At the back on their far right was a silver elephant on a ground of midnight blue that was the King of Kings’ own mark. Vologases rode a grey horse, not as fine as my bay mare – there was no better horse in his empire or ours – but he had thirty men around him on matched blacks that were good enough to keep him safe.

  In the front, to their left, facing us, was the blue tern of Adiabene whose king was Monobasus, the fox-faced petty tyrant who had betrayed Parthia and Rome with equal abandon. I fancied he recognized me as I did him, for he spoke once to his men and they readied their spears, bringing them down in a flurry of silk and iron. Their tips hung level, aimed at our hearts.

  A man’s shout rose up from their rearmost ranks, and the enemy drumbeat changed. As one, in perfect harmony, the oncoming horses rose from a trot to a canter. I could see men’s faces level with my chest, just beyond casting distance for our spears. In the centre of our line, eighty paces to my left, I felt Cadus raise his hand; I did not need to look.

  ‘Sound,’ he said. That was all.

  As one born to this single act, I dipped my lips to meet the trumpet’s mouth even as my hands raised it up to be taken. I breathed deep, set my lips tight, and blew the ripple of eight notes that Cadus and I had planned so many years before in a tavern in Cappadocia. All along the line, the trumpeters of each cohort did the same, and this morning, this glorious morning, we were note-perfect.

  Ripe as riven gold, the sound poured out across the morning.

  Four things happened.

  On the first note, the front ranks cast their javelins and drew their swords and knelt.

  On the second note, the second ranks cast their javelins and drew their swords and knelt.

  On the third note, the third rank cast their javelins and drew their swords and did not kneel.

  On the fourth note, every man in all eight ranks rose to his feet and took one pace to his right, then one pace back for each of the remaining notes, leaving behind hardened oak stakes that stuck out of the earth, angled upwards to meet the bellies and breasts of the oncoming horses.

  It was faultless. It was beautiful. The gods themselves could not have done it more cleanly, more sharply, in better time or in more perfect unison.

  A thousand drills, in daytime, in deepest night, in summer, in winter, on flat ground and bog, on hill and rock and snow, done over and over until each man could place his stake and step around it in his sleep; these drills proved their worth here and now and the men who had cursed Cadus and me for devising it, who had promised our deaths at their own hands on the first battlefield – now these men turned their heads to the front and raised their shields and set their short-swords through the gaps and I read on the face of each one the shine of such pride as made my heart burst.

  Cadus brought his hand down, hard. We sounded two more notes and each man pressed his shield edge firm against the one to his right and like that, as a solid wall, we stepped towards the stumbling, screaming, broken ranks of Vologases’ cavalry.

  I smelled sweat and spilled intestines; I tasted blood on the thick air; I felt my blood surf in my ears and my muscles bunch across my back and I was shouting, I who had not known I had opened my mouth, and it sounded to me as if my whole life had been building to that shout, that it might reach to the sky and rock the earth in its foundations – and that men might die on the end of it; other men than me.

  I looked to my left and Tears grinned back at me and I saw on his face the mirror to my own exultation and knew that he was in love, as I was, with the promise of battle.

  I screamed out his name as my battle cry, and then the name of the legion I adored. A spear came past my ear. I ducked under it, stabbed upwards and felt my blade bite through skin and flesh and liquid vitals. I howled as a wolf howls and did not pause. One man dead, and me still alive; that was enough to call myself a warrior. This is life. This place, balanced on the edge of death – this is what I was made for.

  In five years, I had come to believe that we might win this battle. In doing so, unlikely as it seemed, I had fallen in love with war itself.

  Let me take you back those five years, that I might tell you the whole from the beginning, for I did not, as some do, grow through my childhood wanting to be a legionary. The lust for war came slowly and if I was naïve in all that I did to begin with, if I see it now through battle-hardened eyes, I ask you to remember that one thing: I did not ask for this.

  HYRCANIA, ON THE CASPIAN SEA,

  FEBRUARY, AD 57

  IN THE REIGN OF THE

  EMPEROR NERO

  CHAPTER ONE

  February, AD 57

  BLUE-GREEN, IRIDESCENT, GLEAMING in the hazy sun, the peacock feathers shone out at me from a stall in the heart of the market.

  The feathers were glorious; bright motes of summer in this place of winter greys that spawned unexpected memories of bright Macedonian mornings, of flower meadows and foaling mares, so that I was left floundering like a landed fish, gagging on the stench of rancid seal fat and gathering stares from the almond-eyed, flat-faced men of the Hyrcanian market.

  They despised me; I hated them: these things were taken for granted, but I had never previously made a fool of myself in their presence. That I had done so now gave me yet another grievance against Sebastos Abdes Pantera, the man who served as my superior officer while we remained in this foreign land, and who had sent me, Demalion of Macedon, born a better man than Pantera might ever be, on a slave’s errand.

  The familiar sting of ruined pride brought me to my senses. I blinked away the memories, snapped shut my mouth and, as I had been ordered, paid over a silver coin for twelve peacock pinions; six from the left wing, six from the right.

  The trader tested the silver between his teeth before he parted with the feathers. His eyes were gimlets of suspicion, buried in the folds of flesh that made his face. His beard was brightly black, oiled with fish oil or seal fat or whatever repugnant mess it was that the men here used to keep the frozen sea-wind from splitting their faces.

  I still shaved every day, and kept the cold from my skin with olive oil. The Hyrcanians deemed me no better than a woman for it and were only restrain
ed from saying so because Pantera and Cadus did the same, and Vilius Cadus was a foot larger in each dimension than any of them, hewn from raw granite, with a pugilist’s fists and a nose yet unbroken. None of them dared offend him.

  Whether they would have been as impressed had they known Cadus was a Roman, indeed that he was centurion of the Vth Macedonica legion, favourite of the late Augustus, was an open question. Nobody knew Cadus was a centurion just as nobody knew I was his clerk. Here, we were Greek freemen, no more than bodyguard and scribe to Pantera the horse-trader; necessary parts of his subterfuge.

  Pantera had a lot to answer for.

  ‘Archer! Arrows?’ The fat-faced trader was trying to make conversation. His Greek was appalling; he chopped the words as if his teeth were hatchets, and murdered the vowels.

  I forced a smile. ‘Not me.’ I made gestures to fit the words. ‘These are for Pantera,’ and, at the man’s incomprehension, ‘for the Leopard.’

  ‘Ah!’

  The Leopard was their friend, or so they thought. He brought them amber from the far frozen ocean to the west, balsam from the southern deserts, pearls from the Mediterranean that were larger, more lustrous than the ones from the Hyrcanian Ocean on whose shores they lived. Better than all these, he brought horses from all over the world; fast, good, tough horses that might survive a Hyrcanian winter, and carry their owners on many hunts through the balmy, rain-blessed summers.

  ‘Give these!’ The man thrust a fistful of whole raven feathers into my hand. ‘Good arrows. Go fast. Kill many bear!’

  ‘I’m sure.’ I pressed my fist to my forehead, and remembered to bow as I backed away. Leaving, I wondered if the men here could read minds, or if it was always the case in Hyrcania that some shafts were fletched with peacock flights and others with raven, for I had been sent to buy both.

  The peacock flights were required, so I had been told, for the lighter arrows that Pantera had fashioned through the morning, while the raven feathers were destined for the heavier shafts, with the barbed iron flanges at the tip, designed to stop a bear or a boar.