The Wolf's Gold: Empire V

by Anthony Riches

  He paused, and the prince leaned forward in his saddle again.

  ‘Or what? Is this the point where you offer me some honeyed words to make the bad taste in my mouth go away?’

  Marcus shook his head.

  ‘Far from it, Prince Galatas. I am simply instructed to point out that Rome and the Sarmatae people have a rich history of collaboration over the last century. We fought together against the Dacians back in the time of the Emperor Trajan, and more recently your king Zanticus sent eight thousand horsemen to serve with our army in Britannia. Might this not be another opportunity for us to unite our forces, or at least to coexist in peace?’

  The man sitting to Galatas’s left laughed long and hard, then lifted a leg to jump down from his horse. Hawk-faced, and with a beard that was grizzled with grey, he stood before Marcus with his hands on his hips and a hard, challenging smile. His Latin was equally as polished as the prince’s.

  ‘Zanticus? That fat, bald, pop-eyed old fart? Zanticus found himself over a barrel with three legions up his arse, that’s why he gave up the horsemen, and returned one hundred thousand of your people he was holding captive. When my brother Asander heard the tidings of that defeat, he and I went out to the sacred sword that is proudly sheathed in the soil of our homeland. We poured a libation of the best wine to its spirit, and gave the blade a taste of our blood. The king swore never to give fealty to Rome, and that he would find a way to make your emperor regret his presumption that the defeat of one hapless fool is the defeat of us all.’

  Marcus inclined his head in recognition of the point, glancing up at Galatas with an eyebrow raised in question. The prince sighed quietly.

  ‘This is Inarmaz, my uncle on my mother’s side, and my father’s strongest ally. Over one third of the men in our host owe their fealty to him.’

  Marcus nodded his understanding.

  ‘And he was the first to make common cause with the king when he went to the ox hide?’

  This time Galatas’s smile was without mirth.

  ‘You know our ways then, do you Roman? Yes, my father skinned a bull with his own hands and sat on the hide still bloody from the task, challenging his kinsmen to join him in this sacred deed.’

  ‘And if the king dies? I swear to you that I will bring his body to you should he lose this last fight, just as I have brought you his helmet as a sign of good faith. What if I stand before you again with your father’s body in my arms?’

  Inarmaz replied before Galatas had the chance to respond, his answer both instant and stern.

  ‘We drove a plentiful supply of cattle along behind our spears, and the blade of my kontos is still sharp. Asander Boraz’s death would sadden us all, but it would change nothing, Roman. And that, I think, is enough of your efforts to turn us from the path of war. The next time we meet you would be well advised to come armed and ready to back your words with your blade, but whether armed or not you can be assured that I will put your head on my long spear. This I will swear on the bloody hide that brought me here to make war on your accursed empire.’

  He spat on the ground at Marcus’s feet and turned away, and the king’s son shrugged expressionlessly down at the Roman.

  ‘I suggest you return to your own side of the wall, before the temptation to sheathe iron in your flesh becomes too much for my men to resist any longer.’

  ‘They could be bluffing, of course, to make us believe that it’s in our interests to keep the king alive rather than quietly put him to the knife in the hopes of ending the war he started?’

  Marcus shook his head in answer to his tribune’s question.

  ‘I’d say not, Tribune. The prince struck me as being sincere enough in following his father’s lead, and the king’s brother by marriage has the look of a rabid dog. If the king dies I believe we’ll face exactly the same threat as if he lives.’

  ‘Whereas if he lives, perhaps he’ll feel sufficiently grateful to end the war?’

  The officers turned to face Belletor, but it was left to Gerwulf to voice what they were all thinking.

  ‘Not likely, Tribune. Once a king has taken oaths on the bloody hide he is bound to pursue his destiny to either victory or defeat. And the men waiting beyond our walls can hardly be said to have suffered defeat yet, even if we did stop their attack on the north ridge.’

  Belletor sighed with frustration.

  ‘Then we should strike back at them and clear them away. Surely a surprise attack, perhaps at night . . .’

  ‘Would in all likelihood only end in disaster.’ Every eye turned back to Scaurus in his place at the far end of the table. ‘Five cohorts, all but two of which have never worked together before and most of whom are inexperienced at night fighting? It would be the toss of a coin, but my money would be on these Sarmatae being better at fighting in the dark than most of our men.’ He gestured to Gerwulf. ‘Our Quadi allies excepted, of course. It would be a brave commander who would abandon the security of a well-defended position to risk such a gamble, given the empire’s rather robust approach to punishment in the event of such a spectacular potential failure.’

  Belletor sat in silence for a moment, clearly musing on the rumours they had all heard from Rome on the subject of the young emperor’s rule, tales of military officers ordered to commit suicide for the smallest of perceived failings, then spoke again.

  ‘So all that we can do is wait behind these walls for the enemy to get bored, or more likely to run out of supplies? In that case, I’m going to my bed. Wake me if anything happens.’

  He stood, stretched and left the room. After a long silence Scaurus looked around at his remaining colleagues with a raised eyebrow.

  ‘For my part I’ve had far too interesting a night to get to sleep that easily, and with that many of the enemy at our walls; I think it would be wise if someone were to stay awake. An early lunch, perhaps?’

  The group repaired to his tent and ate a hearty meal while Scaurus and Gerwulf exchanged stories of their respective military careers and Marcus, Sigilis and the Thracian prefect listened with interest. As Scaurus related the story of their war with the British tribes the previous year, Gerwulf listened intently, nodding as the Roman described their various actions in detail. When the story was done he looked at Scaurus with a new respect.

  ‘That’s quite a year you had. It seems Britannia is every bit as troubled as the German and Dacian frontiers. I’d wondered why there wasn’t more reinforcement for Dacia from the fortresses along the Rhenus.’

  Scaurus reached for his cup.

  ‘With the Sixth Legion losing half its strength in one ugly afternoon, there wasn’t really any choice for the empire but to reinforce Britannia from Germania. It was either that or pull back to the south of the country to regroup. We would have lost the northern half of the island for years, perhaps for good, and even if it is a desolate land, good for nothing but breeding slaves and hunting dogs, it would still have been a defeat.’ He smiled at the men around him. ‘And everyone knows what happens to governors who deliver defeats to the throne.’ He took another sip as the officers nodded knowingly. ‘Mind you, even with all that extra manpower it was still hard to tell just who was more likely to end up holding the loser’s severed head for a while . . .’

  He gestured for Arminius to refill their cups.

  ‘But what of you, Prefect? How does the son of a tribal king end up in the service of Rome?’

  Gerwulf leant back, smiling gently, while Arminius refilled his cup with an expression of poorly concealed interest.

  ‘As you may know, Tribune, the story of my people is a strange one. The Quadi tribe is a friend of Rome, and yet we have taken part in some of the bloodiest wars against the empire that the northern frontier has ever seen. And on more than one occasion, men who have been sent to serve as soldiers of Rome have found themselves facing their own people across the battlefield, although not, thank Thunaraz, myself. Not yet, at least.’

  He paused for a sip of heavily watered wine.

&nbs
p; ‘I was taken hostage by Rome more than fifteen years ago, as a boy of thirteen years. My tribe took part in the invasion of Germania Superior that the scholars now tell us was the start of what they’ve taken to calling the German Wars. You have to remember that this was in the days before the plague from the east ravaged the German legions along with the rest of the empire, which meant that the forces to hand were still strong enough to defeat us with ease. I was given over as one of the royal hostages who were taken in return for the legions not simply liquidating the tribe as revenge for our incursion onto imperial territory. Of course, in reality we were only facing part of the First Auxiliary Legion and a heavy cavalry wing, but we weren’t to know that, and so my father made peace rather than risk his people’s complete destruction. I was shipped off to Rome where a rather more enlightened gentleman than most of his peers decided to take me in hand and turn me into the son he never had. By the time the war had turned hot again five years later, I was too civilised to be considered an enemy of the empire, and in any case I was on the brink of joining the army as a junior tribune due to my new “father’s” influence.’

  He drank again, holding the cup up for Arminius to refill.

  ‘Thank you. So off I went to war, and by the Gods I loved it! I started off as a glorified message runner, but once I’d proved myself with the sword I was soon commanding my own cohort. My first proper fight was the disaster at Aquileia, when we marched under the command of the praetorian prefect Titus Furius Victorinus to rescue the city from a barbarian siege, and gentlemen what a fuck up that was! We fought our way out of the battle with half the strength we’d had the day before, and left a carpet of dead and wounded soldiers for the tribesmen to make sport of as we pulled back, still under sporadic attack even as night fell. The official histories say that Furius Victorinus died from the plague, but I saw him go down fighting. They hoisted his head on a spear to terrify the shit out of the rest of us, which worked well enough, I can tell you.’

  He sipped at his wine again.

  ‘We spent the rest of that year on the back foot, just fighting to stop them from penetrating any further south and trying to avoid another pitched battle, because believe me, we were in no fit state. Of course, the two emperors managed to reinforce us in the end, and eventually we went back on the offensive and pushed the tribes back across the Danubius, but it’s true when the old sweats tell you that a man can learn more about soldiering from a single defeat than from a summer of victories. We were hardened by that year, my men and I, and after that we neither gave any quarter nor expected it when we faced barbarians. We fought almost a dozen times in five years, marching up and down the frontier to get to each tribal incursion in turn, and by the time the war had ground to a halt it was clear to everyone around me that I was ready to command more than a single cohort.’

  ‘The problem was,’ – he drank again, smacking his lips in appreciation – ‘the problem was that in the eyes of the army I was still a barbarian. A useful barbarian, mind you, handy for turning raw soldiers into veterans and enemy warriors into carrion, but not one of “us”.’ He raised an eyebrow at Scaurus, who nodded back with a knowing expression. ‘No, I was never going to get my own legion, or even command of a legion detachment if there was someone with darker skin and the right shaped nose to hand, and for a while it looked as if I’d be a junior tribune for the rest of my time with the army, until a detachment of men from my own tribe arrived at the fortress where my legion was in winter quarters. I was the obvious choice to command them, despite the fact that they already had a prefect of sorts. One of my cousins had volunteered to lead them when the Romans had demanded the service of two thousand men as the price for their latest defeat. He made the mistake of taking me for a Roman – I suppose I’d been changed out of any recognition by my experiences – and he compounded the error by insulting me in front of the cohort when it became clear to him that I was taking his place. To have backed down would have been to justify his insolence, so I took him on in single combat, there and then, revealing my true identity as I lifted my sword ready for the death stroke. I half expected the legatus in charge to stop it at that point, but he seemed to find the whole thing hilarious, and allowed it to play out to the end. The men of the cohort were a little suspicious, of course, but we soon got over that, and here we are, still fighting whichever of Rome’s enemies we’re pointed at. We were ordered out here when we marched into Apulum two days ago, and it’s obviously just as well that we were sent here rather than just being kicked up the road to the north to join the Thirteenth Legion.’

  He took another draught of wine, and then looked around the tent with a questioning expression.

  ‘So that’s my story, how about you men? Tribune?’

  Scaurus tipped his head in salute.

  ‘For my part, I consider myself fortunate to have reached my current rank. Like you, I am a man who was always most unlikely ever to command anything bigger than a single cohort. Whereas you suffer from your barbarian origin, I was born into the right family, only a hundred years too late. My ancestor made the mistake of siding with Vitellius during the year of the Four Emperors, and while we were fortunate that Vespasian decided to be magnanimous in victory to the extent that he avoided execution, our family was reduced to relative obscurity in one dismal afternoon.’ He raised his hand and gestured to Marcus. ‘And the centurion here goes by the name of Corvus, a young man from Rome whose letter of introduction got him a place in the cohort just as the rebellion in Britannia started.’

  Gerwulf snorted his amusement, raising his cup in salute.

  ‘That must have been a nasty surprise for a lad fresh from the capital. You’ve seen some action since then?’

  Marcus nodded, his expression solemn.

  ‘Yes Prefect, I’ve taken heads and lost friends.’

  ‘I’ll bet you have. And this young gentleman?’

  Sigilis answered quickly, before Scaurus could introduce him.

  ‘I’m Lucius Carius Sigilis.’

  Gerwulf looked him up and down.

  ‘Just starting your path along the sequence of offices? You’ve had a rude introduction to the ugly face of battle, but you did well enough. I’m pleased to make your acquaintance. And you, my brother?’ He looked at Arminius with a raised eyebrow. ‘How do you come to be in the service of Rome? The last time I saw you, you were still little more than a child.’

  The big German nodded, dipping his head in an unconscious gesture of respect.

  ‘I grew to become a warrior, Prince Gerwulf, and when war came to the Quadi once more I took my stand alongside my brothers. But we were betrayed by Thunaraz, and he sent thunder and lightning to bring us defeat just as we stood poised on the verge of a great victory.’

  Gerwulf smiled again.

  ‘Ah yes, the famous Rain Miracle. You should have heard how that played in Rome at the time. Where you blame the thunder god for the defeat, the received opinion in the legions was that Mercury responded to the prayers of a Roman priest and struck the crucial blows that consigned you to your fate. But like me, you have adapted to that fate and made a new life in the service of Rome. And now, gentlemen, with thanks for both lunch and wine, I must take my leave. My men have a tendency to become troublesome without a good firm hand on their collars.’

  He stood, saluting the tribunes and turned for the tent’s door. Marcus got to his feet and flashed Scaurus a quick salute, following the prefect out into the afternoon’s warmth.

  ‘Let me escort you to—’

  Gerwulf was standing stock-still, staring down the line of tents at something hidden from Marcus’s view. The Roman stepped sideways and realised that the German was looking at Lupus and Mus with narrowed eyes as the two boys walked towards them, too busy chatting to realise that he was in their path.

  ‘Well now, the things a man sees when he least expects it!’

  The sound of Gerwulf’s voice stopped both boys in their tracks, and while Lupus looked up in simple puzzlement,
the effect on Mus was quite the opposite. Barely pausing to digest who it was standing in front of them, he turned and pelted away through the camp without looking back, clearly terrified of the big man.

  ‘Come back here, you little bastard!’

  The German leapt after the fleeing child, knocking Lupus aside in his haste and swiftly catching Mus, grabbing him by the back of his tunic. He laughed with triumph as he lifted the boy off his feet.

  ‘Got you, you little fucker. You might have escaped us back then, but . . .’

  ‘Prefect?’

  Something in Marcus’s voice must have sounded a warning to Gerwulf, who turned quickly, changing hands on the struggling child and reaching for his dagger. The centurion was striding down the line of tents with a fierce scowl, and one hand reflexively dropped onto the hilt of his spatha in response to the German’s move. The German put his free hand out towards him palm first, shaking his head with a forbidding scowl.

  ‘This has nothing to do with you, Centurion, and I’d say you’re somewhat outranked. Back off, and I’ll be away with this thieving little bastard.’

  Far from standing down, Marcus stepped in closer, his nostrils flaring with anger as he ground out his words through bared teeth.

  ‘Release the child.’

  Gerwulf hesitated, his grip on the dagger tightening as he calculated the odds in favour of his managing to get away from the Tungrian camp, but the Roman shook his head forbiddingly, his voice cold.

  ‘If that knife leaves its sheath you won’t have a hand to put it back with. Release the child.’