The two men stopped and watched as their optios chivvied the soldiers good-naturedly into their barracks, with a remarkable lack of the usual shouting and prodding with their brass-knobbed staffs.
‘Harpastum?’
Gaius nodded, raising an eyebrow.
‘Yes, harpastum. You know, two teams, one ball, violence and sudden physical damage? A game beloved of those men whose brains have already been knocked about so many times they can’t feel the damage being done to them any more?’
His friend poked him with the tip of his vine stick.
‘No, I was referring to the Batavians. And my question was, “What Batavians?”. They’re standing guard duty on the Gauls to the best of my knowledge, all eight cohorts, so how they’re going to muster a harpastum team with any chance of standing up to our lunatics is beyond me.’
Gaius grinned back at him.
‘Stop poking me with that fucking stick or I’ll have to give your lot something real to sing about. And all I know is what that old bastard Decimus told us at the dawn meeting today, which you’d have known if you hadn’t been guard centurion and therefore busy shouting at sleepy sentries. Seems the Batavians have managed to scrape up a team from somewhere. Old men and children, I’d imagine.’
The Old Camp, Germania Inferior, December AD 68
‘What a collection of animals.’
Marius nodded his agreement, watching with an expert eye as the Fifth legion’s harpastum team stood waiting for their Batavian opposition to arrive under the watchful eye of the legion’s senior centurion.
‘Decimus knows how to choose a team, you have to give him that. Big solid lumps to form a pack around the ball, a few fast wiry types to move it quickly when we tear it away from the other side …’
‘And his speciality, the dead-eyed bastards who go in to get it.’
‘Given that he did exactly that for twenty years, it’s no surprise he knows how to pick them, eh? And tell me, brother officer, where exactly do I fit into this collection of animals?’
Gaius laughed.
‘Oh, he can pick them alright. You’re perfect material for a harpastum team captain, and he spotted you quickly enough. You’re just hard enough to earn the men’s respect without being such a bastard that they feel they have to make an example of you.’
It was true. Where most centurions took the opportunity of their promotion to give up the game, on the grounds that being manhandled by the troops was hardly conducive to discipline, and knowing full well that an officer made a tempting target on the pitch that few men would be able to resist, Marius had played with a greater intensity after being awarded his vine stick, meeting those opponents who chose to single him out head on, and showing them why it was that he had a crest across his helmet and they didn’t. After the first few broken ribs and concussions inflicted on opposing players who tried to test the new centurion’s mettle, usually just in the run of play but occasionally with a more calculated savagery he had deemed necessary for his own survival, the legion’s men had learned to treat him with cautious respect when he was anywhere near the sacred turf. Fifth Alaudae had been playing the man’s game ever since its founding back in the days of the divine Julius, when the republic’s last dictator had raised them from the conquered natives of Gallia Transalpina to fight his battles alongside the Italian legions, and the spring tournaments, with every century putting up a team to contest their cohort’s championship and the winners fighting it out for dominance of the entire legion, had long been an essential part of training after the relatively inactive days of winter.
‘And where are these Batavians you promised me then?’
Gaius looked about himself with feigned concern, then laughed softly.
‘Who cares? With their men away making sure the Gauls don’t decide to go for another attempt at the Vindex revolt, there’s no way they’re going to able to muster a proper team, so it might be better for all concerned if they didn’t show. After some of the epics we’re seen over the years, it would be an insult to their reputation for our lads to walk over some poor collection of weak sisters. And you know Decimus won’t let you go easy on them.’
Marius nodded.
‘Life’s just like harpastum, boys.’ His voice had taken on their First Spear’s characteristic rasp. ‘Just when you think you’ve got the ball over the line, some ugly bastard comes out of nowhere and smacks you in the face while the arbiter isn’t looking, and the next thing you know you’re on your back spitting teeth and counting stars while he runs off with the ball, fucking laughing!’ He paused the obligatory moment before delivering the usual punch line. ‘Well you won’t find me fucking laughing!’
Gaius laughed, attempting the same mimicry with their superior’s best-known catchphrase.
‘So fucking do it to him first, eh?’
They laughed at the collected wisdom of their commander, then Marius raised a hand and pointed at the road that ran alongside the pitch to the fortress’s main gate.
‘There they are. Showing off their bloody horses as per usual.’
The Batavian team traditionally arrived for the game on horseback, emphasising what they saw as their superiority over the legions that were almost completely infantry based, whereas one man in every three in a Batavian cohort rode one of their famed beasts, trained to swim rivers with a rider and two fully armoured infantrymen men hanging off them to deliver fighting troops to the most unexpected parts of a battle. The two men frowned, staring at the newcomers in incomprehension, Gaius shaking his head in puzzlement.
‘How are they Batavians? Their tunics are the wrong colour for a start. The Batavian cohorts wear red, whereas these boys are all dressed in white.’
The opposition team dismounted as they watched, and Marius whistled at their size.
‘Old men and children, you promised me.’
His friend shrugged with the insouciance of a man who would be watching rather than participating in the forthcoming violence.
‘What’s your problem? You’re supposed to be the hardest men in the legion, or so you keep telling the rest of us. Come on, let’s go and have a closer look.’
When they reached the spot where the opposition had dismounted, they found that Decimus had beaten them to it and was far from sharing their bemusement. Embracing the Batavian team’s leader with the familiarity of an old friend, he turned back to greet his officers with a broad grin.
‘Now I know we’re going to get a real game! This man …’ he turned to gesture at the German he had greeted a moment before, ‘… is Hramn. He’s an old friend from games we’ve played in the past, a decurion from the Batavian cohorts who was a titan of the game, before he was selected to lead the emperor’s German Bodyguard in Rome and was promoted to the exalted rank of decurion. Now that Galba has sent him and his men back home to join the army of Germania Inferior, they have nothing better to do than come and match their wits and muscle against our own. Did you get much harpastum in Rome, Hramn?’
The German laughed softly, his blue eyes alive with amusement.
‘We taught the praetorians to play the game, but only to give us someone to practise on. I’m expecting that you’ll find us slow, like men with rusty swords and broken shields after so many years without proper opponents.’
Decimus cocked his head to one side.
‘Oh, you think so? I’m away to give my lads a talking to, so I suggest you get your animals suitably warmed up and we’ll see you on the pitch. I’ll judge one half and you can take the other, if that suits?’
Gathering the two centurions to him, Decimus walked towards his waiting men, a tone of genuine excitement in his voice.
‘This should be a proper game, not like beating those women of the Fifteenth when there’s no one better to take on. Right, you ugly collection of half-wits!’ The Fifth’s team looked back at their leader with expressions that combined inquisitive curiosity with their usual aggressive confidence as to who it was that they were facing. ‘Those men aren
’t just any Batavians, they’re the men who until a few months ago were the emperor’s personal bodyguard. That’s right, the poor bastards who got sent home by that arsehole Galba when Nero decided to kill himself. I remember Hramn from the old days, when we used to play games that would make you children go white with the violence that was on offer, and then we’d sweat out the mud in the bathhouse like old comrades and get pissed on that dog-rough beer they drink. So be warned, my lads, these men know the game. You’ll be on the back foot from the moment I blow my whistle unless you get stuck in like the men you keep telling each other you are.’
After completing their ritual preparations for the game, the two teams took to the pitch, twenty-five men to a side, and the two judges paced out the all-important line between the two, while both sides stood and stared at the other in the usual silent attempt to convince the opposition that they were only there to make up the numbers. Drawing the line into the pitch’s soft mud with a spear blade, the two judges clasped arms and tossed a coin for first possession, which was promptly awarded to the men of the Fifth. They parted after another clasp, Hramn walking to the sidelines while Decimus stood with one foot either side of the newly inscribed line and addressed both sides in a loud voice.
‘The Fifth has possession!’ He tossed a hard leather ball the size of a pomegranate to Marius, whose team promptly assumed a defensive formation around him ready to resist the inevitable Batavi onslaught. ‘Each half of the game will last for a half-hour sand glass, which will be timed by my centurion here!’ He pointed to Gaius. ‘At the half-time point my friend and former colleague Hramn will assume the duties of judge and the teams will change sides of the pitch! The team with the most successful carries over the line will be judged to be the winner! And the rules …’
Marius and Gaius shared an amused glance, knowing Decimus’s often-stated opinion that in harpastum, as in life, the rules mainly existed to be broken, and that the only measure of success was not to be caught in the act of gaining an unfair advantage.
‘The rules are these: no biting, no eye gouging, no deliberate bone injuries and no stamping once a man is on the floor! Any man of either side who breaks these rules while I am judge will receive a swift and harsh punishment!’ He raised a heavy leather cosh loaded with small lead balls, a means of enforcing discipline that the Fifth had long used to ensure that a pitch judge had the means of quickly calming any situation where tempers had got sufficiently out of hand for his whistle to have become ineffective. ‘Although if I have to use it …’ He raised a clenched fist that had become famed as his usual means of dishing out swift punishment on the pitch. ‘Then you’ll already have got to know this!’ The men of the Fifth laughed softly at the old joke, but Marius noticed that the Germans were stone-faced, clearly intent on their game. ‘And, as is usual in these friendly games …’ He paused again for effect, a small smile creasing his lips, but not even his own men laughed this time. ‘There will be no punching or kicking tolerated unless in a direct attempt to get to the ball. So no private fights on the side, gentlemen, not unless you want to wake up feeling like it’s the morning after Saturnalia all over again!’
He turned to the Batavians.
‘Ready?’
The German captain set his body, ready to run at the Fifth’s pack and with his eyes locked on Marius in his position behind the Fifth’s line.
‘Ready!’
Decimus looked over at his own men, nodded at their determined faces.
‘Ready?’
The twenty-five men barked an answer in unison, slapping big hands down onto their muscular thighs as they set themselves to resist the Germans’ rush.
‘READY!’
Blowing a long note on his whistle, the senior centurion pointed at the Germans and then gestured them forward over the line, stepping smartly back to avoid being overrun by the charge to contact that he knew was coming.
‘Play!’
Holding the ball in the centre of the Fifth’s pack, Marius had little to do other than wait and watch for his moment to come, as the charging Germans hammered into the legion team’s defensive line, their entire focus on getting through the bodies that were protecting the game’s objective and taking possession of the ball. Their attack was swift and brutal, each man knowing his role in taking a member of the opposing team and dealing with him swiftly and efficiently, tackling him to the ground where their struggle for dominance of the wrestling match that resulted ensured that the legionary was unable to resume his place in the line between the Germans and Gaius. With the first line of defence stripped away the Batavian pack bored in hard, the bigger men crashing into the legion team’s defence with a collective grunt of expelled breath followed by a hectic struggle as the two forces fought for supremacy toe to toe, punches being traded with no signal from Decimus in his role of judge other than to nod approvingly as one of his men rocked a Batavian back with a jab that broke the German’s nose with an audible pop, then snarl his approval as the other came back with a countering jab and hook that dropped the legionary in question to his knees, shaking his head in confusion.
‘Elephants!’
Barking the legion’s battle cry the last men between Marius and the attacking Germans stepped in to fight, but the Batavian drive forward had been too fierce, taking too many of the defenders out of the fight for possession, and their superior numbers swiftly told, one huge man simply wrapping a pair of legionaries up in his ape-like arms and taking them to the ground with his weight holding them down, laughing as they rained punches onto the top of his head to little effect. Realising that the time for a static defence was gone, Marius backed away from the protection of the crumbling line in front of him, watching in horror as the rampaging attackers dismantled the last vestiges of his defenders with brutal efficiency. Turning to his right, looking for a gap in the Batavian attack, he saw a knot of legion men who had gained superiority over three Germans whose only aim had been to temporarily take them out of the game, and darted towards them with the ball under his left arm and the other hand clenched into a fist. Shoulder-charging an unprepared German out of his way, he covered another half-dozen steps towards the sanctuary of his comrades’ reforming line before going down under a tide of German bodies, a swift punch to the back of his head turning his fingers to jelly and allowing the ball to be stripped from his grasp by the man whom Decimus had called Hramn with no more resistance than a small child might have offered. Lying on his back, momentarily dazed, he watched in disgust as the German pack fought their way back over the line to their own territory with equally brutal speed and power, a dozen men gathered around their captain and literally punching their way back into their own territory. Decimus blew his whistle to announce the point won, and Marius allowed his head to sink back onto the cold mud, wincing at the bruise that was still making his head ring. Opening his eyes he saw the senior centurion standing over him with a hand outstretched, his eyes alive with the delight of the game.
‘On your feet Marius! Your turn to attack.’
Shaking his head, he exchanged a wry glance with Gaius, then barked an order to his team to reform for the restart, his eyes roaming over the Batavian defence for any sign of a weakness to be exploited as he bellowed a challenge at his team.
‘Are you still sleeping?! Wake up your ideas, you bastards! Make them pay for that point in blood! For the honour of the Fifth! Elephants!’
An hour later, with the Fifth having lost the match by seven points to five, the two teams stood panting and bloodied in ankle-deep mud that their boots had chewed into foaming ruin, a miniature replica of a battlefield apart from the lack of blood, urine and liquid excreta pooling in their bootprints, while Decimus addressed them in glowing terms and reluctantly admitted that the game ranked with the finest he had played.
‘That was harpastum to rank with the best! There was no honour lost there by either side, and you can all be proud of the way you played! The men in the infirmary will get beer and food, once they’ve been tr
eated, the rest of you follow me to the bath house. You’ve earned a sweat and a drink, and the Fifth Legion always lays on a good meal for our Batavian brothers-in-arms on this occasion!’
Marius’s legs were weak to the point of near collapse, and the lump on the back of his head was now the size of an egg, rendering him slightly dizzy, but having washed the blood from his face with a bucket of warm water, he lowered himself onto a bench in the warm room and took a mug of beer from one of the stewards detailed to serve both teams in a bath house that had been cleared for their exclusive use. A Batavian sank heavily onto the bench beside him, taking a beer and offering his hand to be clasped. It was the man who had taken the ball from him the first time by dint of inflicting the bruise on his head that was still throbbing sickeningly.
‘I’m Hramn. That was a good game, Captain.’
‘Marius. That was a hard game. Harder than most I’ve played in.’
The German shrugged with a lopsided grin, one of his eyes almost closed as the result of a punch that Marius had dealt him a few minutes after losing the ball for the first time, a punch the German had greeted with the smile of a man truly at home on the battered turf of a harpastum pitch.
‘A hard game is a good game. And we needed a hard game.’
Marius nodded, recognising the slight note of apology in the man’s voice.
‘You’ve been treated harshly. If the Fifth were dealt such a blow I know plenty of men who would be spitting blood and eager to find some way to avenge themselves on the men who denied them what they had earned.’
The other man raised his mug of beer.
‘We are a patient people when we need to be, the Batavi until the time for patience is at an end. For now we can wait, to see if the emperor changes his mind given enough time, play harpastum and drink good beer with the new friends we have the opportunity to make while we have nothing better to do.’
Marius leaned closer, lowering his voice.
Betrayal: The Centurions I Page 9