But the army was up to strength again, and it pushed through the mountains of the Black Forest like an armored beast with three heads, sweeping clean north and eastward to form a new frontier line along the valley of the Nicer River. In their wake they left smoking ruin and the rough-cut beds of new roads to link the Nicer Valley outposts with the old frontier along the Rhenus. What was left of Nyall’s war band harried them as they went, striking and retreating through bog and forest, but never willing to waste their strength again in all-out attack on that iron-clad beast.
Calpurnius Rufinus grew daily more irritable under these attacks. With three legions camped along the Nicer, Nyall’s attacks were futile, but Rufinus couldn’t keep the legions there forever, leaving the rest of the Upper German frontier unguarded. And then on the hottest day of midsummer, the legion caught Nyall almost by accident.
XII A Traffic in Souls
The Twenty-second and the Vindonissa troops were hunting to the north and south, and the legate had taken the Eighth Augusta in a predawn attack to break open the last of the German strongholds on the Nicer River, a village on the river bank that the scouts had reported was unusually well-fortified. They broke the timber walls with siege towers, and the Augusta poured in to find the bulk of Nyall’s war band massed and readying for a counterattack of their own while the Eighth was still separated from its sister legions.
Nyall had waited too long, bowing to the priests’ insistence on a month of sacrifice and prayer for the dead abandoned by him, knowing that his war band would not ride united without it. And the legion’s reinforcements had come, fresh troops, tight-wound with a wearisome summer of small wars and no glory. They came through the broken walls in a river of red and bronze, with the weight of a full legion behind them, and caught the war band between its own fortifications and the fast-flowing river.
Correus, back in the line with his men now, took them in behind Messala Cominius, over the outer ditch and past the splintered wreckage of the walls where the siege towers leaned drunkenly and their cargo of archers shot flaming arrows into the roof thatch of German huts. The Germans met them in the gray light, howling behind their shields, but there was no room to charge, and most had not even had time to mount their horses. The legion pushed them back step by step as the flames of the burning hold leaped up around them. Cattle and goats broke free of their pens and ran lowing and terrified between the huts, and the screams of horses could be heard from the burning barn. The Germans fell back and yanked the barn doors open as the roof caved in, scrambling to mount the panic-stricken animals. It was chaos; carnage in the half-light of dawn, gold-tinged by the burning buildings that were made of timber and reeds beneath the plaster. Blood was turned orange by the flames. The women of the hold, most in nightclothes, fought beside their men with daggers or long swords or spears or even kitchen knives. Correus heard with horror the screams of children in the tumult.
When the Germans pulled back, the women and children were hurried through the far gate, or climbed the timber rampart and dropped to the ground below, for a desperate swim across the fast-flowing waters of the Nicer. The warriors had split outside the gate to block the legion from coming around either side of the walls and to keep them from the fugitives in the river. Now, with the last of their people out, they jammed the gate closed, too.
The Eighth Cohort was well inside the hold, and Correus was in the charge that threw itself at the gate. They hit it like a ram, but the opening was narrow and a small force could hold a large one from it for some time.
“Damn!” Messala Cominius pulled himself up on the rampart to look over, then dropped back as a spear sang past his ear. “We’ve got to break out. Half the German war band is in that lot that’s heading for the river!”
The rearguard wings to either side of the holding and the blockade at the gate would remain steadfast until they died, and if they didn’t die soon enough, the rest would escape. The far wall was blazing at the end where a burning cow byre had fallen against it, but it would never burn down in time for the Romans to attack through it. Correus looked where the charred cow byre lay against the timber wall, and something prodded insistently at the back of his mind. Something Forst had said… “The horned ones are the creatures of the Goddess. That is why when the dead go back to her, they go by the Horned Gate.” The narrow door set in the hold wall beside the cow byre… not for living cattle but for dead men, carried past the creatures of the Goddess so that their souls might be known to her.
“Come on!” Correus signaled to Cominius and they raced through the smoking rubble to the byre. A pair of cow’s horns was set into the timber at head height, and beneath it, through the smoke, they could just see the outlines of a narrow door. Correus pushed through the smoke, choking, and knocked the latch pin loose. The flames were eating close to it and the wood was hot to the touch, but he put his shield edge against it and pushed. The door swung open. It was narrow, no more than the width of a bier, and the soldiers formed up single file and ran through the spreading flames and thick smoke with their scarves over their faces. They had nearly the whole cohort through, coughing and slapping at sparks that fell from the flaming wall, before the warriors at the main gate saw what was happening and pulled back to face them.
The cohort met them, choking, soot black, and half blinded from the smoke, but standing solid with shields up. All but the last century was through before the wall caved in with a roar of flame that no one could have crossed.
“Hold them!” Cominius shouted. “That’s all we have to do, lads – just hold them!”
As the Germans pulled back from the gate and from the right-hand wing outside the walls, the legionaries who had been hammering at them surged through and caught the fleeing war band on the river bank. They tore them to pieces while the Eighth Cohort struggled in the smoke and flames with the warriors who had tried to buy the band’s escape with their lives.
In a few minutes it was over, and there was nothing between the blazing hold and the river but the bodies of Germans, smeared with blood in place of the battle marks they had not had time to paint.
* * *
Correus and Cominius stumbled with their singed cohort to the river. They knelt on the bank, pouring clear cold water over blistered skin, while fresher troops from the rear roved through the hold like hounds to hunt down survivors.
There were few enough. Most who couldn’t flee had burned. A few women who hadn’t made it out the gate had killed themselves, and more had drowned in the cold, fast waters of the river. A number of warriors, stronger swimmers, had made it across in the confusion of the final fighting, including some of the rear guard. The legate had no wish to drown his own men in pursuit, and it would take a full day to get a bridge across, by which time the Germans would have disappeared in ones and twos in the hills to the east. The war band was broken, Rufinus thought – let the stragglers go. It wasn’t until they put out the flames and cleared the burned fort that he discovered to his utter fury that Nyall was not among the dead. A few bodies were burned beyond recognition, but none was of the right build. It might be that they would pull his drowned body from the bank downriver, but it was infinitely more likely that he was gone away into the eastern hills with the crippled remnants of his army.
It was in no very good mood that the legate went to deal with the survivors.
Correus was crouched on a stool in the field-hospital tent, talking to a gray-haired German with a scarred and pockmarked face. His only garment was a pair of woolen trousers, filthy with mud and ashes, but he wore a gold collar around his neck and the thongs in his braids had once been fine scarlet-dyed leather. He had been found pinned beneath a fallen roof beam. Labienus had cut the trousers away and was wrapping a wet bandage around the burned leg.
“His name is Jorunn,” Correus said when the legate came up. Rufinus’s face was soot-streaked and his gilded breastplate was covered with wet ash. “It was his holding we burned, and he’s not overly talkative, but from what I can pry
out of him, they were planning to stage a major raid on the legion soon. Most of the war band was in the hold when we hit it.”
The legate nodded. “How many got away?”
Correus repeated the question in German, and Jorunn spat out an answer. “Not enough to trouble the commander of the Eagles on his frontier. Or enough to rebuild my hold.”
The legate gave him a hard look, his eyes flinty in the soot. “That would not be permitted, anyway. Your hold is gone, Jorunn, and your people with it, and if you do not like it, you should have thought of that before you allied with the Semnones.”
Jorunn spat at him and slapped Labienus’s hand away from his burned leg, but the surgeon merely shrugged. He was finished, anyway. Labienus gestured to Correus to hold out his hands and began winding bandages around them.
The legate wiped the spittle from his face with the back of his hand. “That could get you crucified, but I’m thinking you’ll like the mines even less. It lasts longer.” He nodded to the optio beside him. “Send him to Argentoratum when he can travel.”
He was about to move on to the next man when there was a scuffling at the tent flap, and two legionaries struggled through, dragging a woman between them. A tribune named Crassus followed, looking amused, and saluted the legate while the woman kicked and bit at her guards. One of them cuffed her hard across the face and she subsided.
“They found her in the main hall, sir,” Crassus said. “She got caught when the roof came down. She tried to burn herself first, and she had a sword. She cut two men before they took it away from her. I thought we should hang on to her. She looks like she’ll clean up nicely.”
Correus looked curiously at the girl. Her face and arms were filthy, and her gown, which might once have been green, was tattered and blood-soaked. The gold hair that fell past her waist was burned off on one side almost to her ears, and he saw that her gown was burned as well on that side. As the tribune had said, she would be beautiful when she was clean, but what caught at him were her eyes – trapped eyes, like a hunted cat’s, under the singed lashes.
Messala Cominius came in just then to have his own burned hands salved, and he also gave the girl an appraising look. The legate studied her, noting the curve of her body under the ruined gown, mentally wiping away the blood and dirt. He nodded.
“Yes. She ought to be worth a fair amount once someone’s knocked some manners into her. Labienus, what about those burns?”
The surgeon studied her. The girl was still now, rock still, only the green eyes moving from one face to the other. “They seem to be superficial, sir. They should heal with no mark if they’re taken care of.”
“Then do so. And put a guard on her to make sure she doesn’t try to ruin herself. Or knife you with a scalpel. We’ll ship her to Argentoratum when she’s healed.”
The tribune coughed. “Uh, sir… I was thinking. Rather than go to the trouble of sending her to Argentoratum, I’d, uh… like to have her. I’ll pay a fair price to the spoils chest, of course. Rome price,” he added, “more than we could get at Argentoratum.”
“No!” Correus was on his feet without thinking. “No, let me have her. I’ll—I’ll match the tribune’s price,” he added recklessly. He gave the tribune an urgent look. “You don’t really want a woman you can’t even speak to, do you?”
“I wasn’t planning on discussing philosophy with her,” Crassus said. “Now see here—”
Messala Cominius saw that Correus’s face was pale and there was something in his eyes that matched the hunted-cat look in the girl’s. “Just a moment, sir,” he said to the legate. “If it wasn’t for Centurion Julianus we wouldn’t have got through that back wall in time. I was going to recommend him for some sort of reward. Why not let him have the girl?”
“I have already given Centurion Julianus a valuable horse,” the legate said, and Correus thought there was a faint note of sarcasm in his voice. The gray war-horse had kicked the rear wheel off a baggage wagon that morning.
“I would be glad to give the tribune the horse in compensation,” Correus said.
The legate chuckled and the tribune’s mouth set in a stubborn line. He was tired of the woman he had now, and he outranked this centurion. He outranked Messala Cominius too, if it came to that. “I fancy you’ll find my claim the better one, sir,” he said loftily, and adjusted the purple sash of office that was knotted neatly around his immaculate breastplate. He had not taken an active part in the fighting.
Perhaps it was that which decided the legate – Calpurnius Rufinus was a career officer himself. “There are other women,” he said to the tribune. “You may have your pick of any we have taken – since you’re willing to pay Rome price – but I’m going to let Centurion Julianus have this one. Also at Rome price,” he added, “since the purchase is disputed.”
Correus calculated quickly. It would take all his pay and most of his father’s allowance to meet the price, but there wasn’t much else to spend it on out there. And the girl wouldn’t go to this lofty, bored-looking young tribune, who would sell her off to the men as soon as she, too, began to bore him.
The girl had stood silently between her captors (one of whom had a scratched face and a swollen eye) understanding not a word, but when Correus nodded to them to bring her up to have her burns treated she began to struggle wildly again.
Jorunn lay staring at the ceiling, unmoving. The girl had been one of his wife’s waiting women, but his wife was dead, and his son with her, and he didn’t care anymore.
“Be still!” Correus snapped at her in German, and she flung her head back and stared at him while the guards twisted both arms behind her. His mother might have looked like that when she was first captured, he thought, and knew suddenly why he had bought her.
“Look you,” he said softly, “you belong to me now. I have bought you. Do you understand that?”
She nodded, and her eyes went cold, like a tide pool.
“I won’t sell you again, and I won’t hurt you. Now will you be still and let the surgeon treat your burns?”
She nodded stiffly at that, then pulled her arms free from the guards and sat on a stool while Labienus eased the burned gown away from her breast and smeared salve on the reddened skin. She knew that the men were watching her, but she never flinched.
Correus wished she didn’t have to endure that under the hungry gaze of a room full of men. He turned his back and moved away to the next prisoner, and the legate followed him. Cominius said something to the tribune and he stalked out with Cominius behind him.
When they had finished, Rufinus surveyed the collection of burned and wounded legionaries awaiting treatment. They were watching the girl avidly. “Get her out of here before she starts a riot,” the legate said. “And watch yourself.” Correus thought he looked amused. “Maybe I should have let that tribune have her. She might have got rid of him for me.”
The girl was still huddled on her bench. Correus beckoned to her and she followed him, seemingly resigned now. She still hadn’t spoken.
He took her across the camp to the baggage wagons, where a stout woman with hennaed hair, named Rhodope, kept a firm rule over the five cowed whores in her charge. Labienus also had a woman, a round matronly female with a bit of a squint who bullied him like a nurse and kept his tent clean, but Correus thought that Rhodope was better equipped to deal with a woman who had wounded two legionaries with a sword. She also spoke some German.
Rhodope was sitting in front of her tent in the padded armchair that she dragged everywhere with her, crimping an Ethiopian girl’s dark hair into stiff waves with a hot iron. She looked up at Correus and smiled. A gold front tooth gave her a barbaric splendor, and her orange hair was startling against an olive complexion. Her voluminous gown of scarlet was trimmed around the bedraggled hem with bright green embroidery. “Correus! Come and sit down and talk to me. I’m tired of these stupid girls.” Correus patronized her establishment only infrequently, but he treated the girls well and Rhodope was fond of him.
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“Charis, bring the centurion a chair!” she called into the tent.
“No, no,” he said. “I have to get back to duty. I came to ask a favor of you.”
“Oh?” Rhodope put a last crimp in the girl’s hair and the iron smoked with the scent of old hair oil. Rhodope thrust the iron back in the pot of hot coals at her feet and prodded the girl with the toe of her blue sandals. “All right, Leza, go and help Charis with the cleaning. We’ll be having callers tonight and they won’t pay money to bed down in a pigsty.” The Ethiopian girl departed with a pouting look – they had cleaned the tent only last week – and Rhodope settled herself in her chair. “Now, Correus, what is this favor you wish?” She gave the German girl an appraising look.
“This is—” He turned to the girl. “What’s your name?” he asked in German.
She stared back at him, holding her torn green gown around her. She was tall – she could look him in the eye. “Freita.”
“This is Freita. She comes from the holding we burned out this morning, and she’s mine now.”
Rhodope looked amused. “It seems I have lost a customer. It also seems to me that I remember you telling me a tale once that you would not own a slave.”
“Well, I do now,” Correus said. “Shut up, Rhodope, and listen to me.”
Rhodope leaned forward with her elbows on her knees. “Very well, I make myself attentive.” Her brown eyes were bright and curious.
“I want you to look after her for me until I can make some arrangements. Get her clean and find her something to wear, and keep an eye on her – she may do something stupid.”
Rhodope studied the girl. “Probably. She is a fighter, that one.”
The Centurions Page 23