The Skystone cc-1

by Jack Whyte

  We walked out of his tent and into the two longest years of my life.

  III

  It galls me to admit it, but even today as I write this, the young men who make up our own forces here in the Colony are so involved with horses and cavalry tactics that they have little or no idea of the composition of the classic Roman legion. Consequently, I have to accept the fact that some explanation will be necessary if those who read these words in years to come are to understand what happened in those days to the Roman armies.

  Before the growth of cavalry forces and tactics, the Roman legion was an infantry force made up of ten cohorts. Two of these Cohorts held ten maniples each, and the other eight each held five. A maniple consisted often, eleven or twelve ten-man squads, so that a legion at full strength numbered not less than six thousand men. In addition, each of the eight smaller cohorts had a squadron of thirty cavalry attached to it. Cavalry at that time were no more than mounted bowmen, skirmishing troops whose job was to provide a mobile defensive screen out in front while the legion was drawing up into battle formation.

  The First and Second Cohorts of every legion were the Millarians, double cohorts of one thousand to twelve hundred men with sixty cavalry attached. Theirs was the honour and responsibility of holding the right of the line of battle. Only battle-hardened veterans were assigned to these cohorts, and their officers and warrant officers were the finest, having won their posts by exemplary conduct and outstanding ability. Ours was a Millarian Cohort. Just before the start of the Invasion, as it came to be known, we had been on duty in the garrison town of Luguvallium, hard by Hadrian's Wall. Units of the Twenty-fourth Legion stationed there had fomented a violent, short-lived mutiny. Our task had been to eradicate the mutineers, using the experience we had gained in Eboracum. The exercise had been drastic and unpleasant, but we had completed it and were on our way to join up with two of our own auxiliary cohorts in Mamucium when the enemy came over the Wall. To this day nobody knows how many Roman soldiers died that day, and how many simply deserted into the hills, or even joined the barbarians. The invaders overran all of the north country and most of the south-east. There were even barbarians in Londinium! Ours was one of the very few units that survived, and we had Britannicus and his old-fashioned ideas — leavened with more than a bit of sheer military genius — to thank for it. Britannicus was one of those rare officers who was like a god to his men. He was the toughest, most bloody-minded disciplinarian I'd ever served under, and the men would have marched into Hades for him. Once again, any future reader of these words may not understand that to be able to say that about any commander of Roman forces in those days was phenomenal in itself. The old days of the Republic and of Empire triumphant were centuries gone. By the beginning of the fourth Christian century, the eleventh century of Rome, senior rank was held, in the main, by horses' arses rich enough to buy it. And ninety out of every hundred of those leaders were afraid to antagonize the men they ostensibly commanded.

  The average soldier in the armies of the Empire was a joke. Every one was a Roman citizen, by imperial decree. Black, white, yellow, brown or painted with blue woad, they were all Roman citizens. There were Germans, Numidians, Egyptians, Armoricans,' Phoenicians, Greeks, Vandals, Huns, Thracians, Dacians, Franks, Saxons, Scots, Levantines and Jews. We taught them how to fight, instructed them in battle techniques and strategy, and equipped them, and then they deserted in their thousands to their home territories to organize resistance against the Roman succubus!

  Everyone knew what was happening. We knew we were training our own adders to bite us. It was a fact of life, and it was aggravated by the fact that, while they were in the army, they all had their "rights." It had become normal for garrison troops to be excused from wearing breastplates and carrying shields at all times. They were too heavy for the men! The results were preordained. The debacle at Hadrian's Wall was a micro-cosmic example of the state of the whole Empire.

  Britannicus, following in the steps of his own father, would have none of this. He had a stony row to hoe at first, because his methods were as out of date as those of the Republic he admired, but he had the courage of his convictions and he was willing to lay his own balls on the line. He expected his men to make a twenty-five-mile march every week in full gear. That meant seventy pounds of helmet, armour, two spears, five javelins, scutum (the infantryman's heavy shield), leg greaves, cooking pots, rations, canteen and two palisades (long, pointed poles to be used in setting up the camp's defences each night).

  Every night on the march, or on manoeuvres, the men built a fortified camp, surrounded by a ditch and palisaded walls and gates. Only then were they allowed to relax and eat their evening meal sitting down. Breakfast was always consumed standing or on the move.

  Britannicus did everything he expected his men to do. He marched at the head of the column, on foot and carrying full gear. He could out march, out run, out jump and out fight any man in his cohort at any time of the day or night.

  When he first took command of the cohort, the men were appalled. By their own lights, they were already crack troops, second only to the First Cohort. By his lights, they were rabble whom he was determined to make into soldiers second to none. They hated his guts, and he fed them back their own vomit. He used the full authority of his rank and the Empire to punish them, harshly, every time they asked for it. Every time he so much as imagined defiance he ground their faces down into the dirt. And the more they hated him and resented him, the rougher he was. Eventually they discovered that if they were going to beat him, it would have to be on his own ground and by his own rules, so they tried that. And they failed. And then, somewhere along the line, they began to develop a pride in themselves, in their toughness, and in their rotten, whoreson, bloody-minded, miserable commander. And only then, and only very slowly, did they begin to realize that for every fault they could find in him, someone else, somewhere in the cohort, could point out something that was not too bad, or something that you had to respect, or something that you even had to admire.

  They began to realize that they had no bad officers. At least, they said, not bad compared to what the other cohorts had to put up with. Britannicus had cleaned out his officer corps within weeks of his arrival, and now it seemed that any new officer in the Second Cohort was quickly made to shape up, or move out. No officer ever took advantage of an enlisted man in the Second Cohort; punishment was swift, severe and certain, but victimization was unknown.

  The men discovered that they were always well fed — far better fed than the other units around them, where officers had other things to consider ahead of the diets of their men. Britannicus, it was observed, put the welfare of his men — their food, their equipment and their billets — above everything else.

  The cohort had been under his command for two years when Aaron Flavius, pilus prior and thus my opposite number in the First Cohort, came to me late one afternoon and asked me to arrange an interview for him with Britannicus on what he termed "a personal and confidential matter." Too surprised to demur, I took Aaron's request directly to Britannicus. He had been in a foul mood all day long and was clearly uncomfortable with such an unusual request. His frown darkened to a forbidding scowl immediately, and he growled, "What does he want to see me about, Centurion?"

  I spoke to a point in the air above his left shoulder. "I don't know, Tribune." We were being very formal that day.

  "Are there no officers in his own cohort? And what about the primus pilus?" These were obviously rhetorical questions, so I said nothing. "Very well, send him in," he snapped. So in went Aaron Flavius, red-faced and ill at ease, but clearly determined about something. I was more than simply curious. This kind of thing was unheard of in the Roman army. I hung around outside, hoping to find out what was going on.

  Flavius was in there for about a quarter of an hour, and when he came out, saluting at the door and whirling like a doll on his heel, I was waiting for him.

  "What was all that about?"

  He look
ed at me very strangely. "You'll find out," he growled, and then he marched out of there like one of my own men on defaulters' parade. I watched him go, scratching my chin as I wondered what was going on. The two men on guard duty, I realized, were watching me curiously. I rounded on them.

  "What in blazes are you two gawking at? Hoping I'll take you into my confidence, are you? Get your minds on your work or I'll have you on latrine duty for a month."

  I heard the door open behind me.

  "Centurion Varrus."

  "Tribune!"

  "Join me, please."

  "Yes, sir!" I withered the two guards with one last baleful glare and made my way into Britannicus's office, where I closed the door at my back, snapped to attention and saluted.

  "Sit." The word came as a peremptory bark, more a command than an invitation. His face was turned downward in the act of reading something he had just written, so I could not see his expression, nor could I gauge his frame of mind from the tone of his voice in that one word. Reserving judgment on his mood, therefore, I sat on one of the two chairs facing his table and waited for him to get around to whatever it was he wanted to tell me.

  He was in no hurry. He read the papyrus in his hand again, from top to bottom, his lips moving as he whispered the words for his own ears. Then he picked up a pen from an ink pot and signed his name to whatever it was he had written. That done, he turned his gaze on me, a wide-eyed stare I had come to know well. That particular expression meant he was looking but not seeing. His eyes seemed fixed on me, but his thoughts were elsewhere. I waited. Finally his gaze sharpened again and focused on me, and I knew he had arrived at a decision.

  "Well," he asked me, "what do you think?" I kept my face blank. "About what, Tribune?"

  "About that nonsense," he said, waving his hand towards the door.

  "Your friend, Aaron Flavius."

  Still I allowed nothing to show on my face. "What about him, Tribune?

  What nonsense?"

  He was staring at me now with an expression of mild incredulity, and his next words came in a softer tone. "You really don't know, do you?" I said nothing, and he rose from his chair and began to pace around, undoing the buckles on his breastplate as he moved and spoke.

  "I found it hard to believe that he hadn't told the primus pilus," he said, talking almost to himself. "I mean, Catullus is going to cut him a new anus for coming to me without going through him, bypassing the chain of command. But I didn't believe he wouldn't have talked it through with you at least, since he had to go through you to get to me. Here, help me with this, will you?"

  I moved to help him with the last set of buckles beneath his right shoulder, the same ones I could never undo by myself. He shrugged out of the heavy leather cuirass and placed it on the floor by his feet, then stretched mightily and tugged at his tunic until it hung comfortably again.

  "That's better! Now it feels like the end of a long, miserable day in garrison." He crossed to a wall cupboard and brought out two cups and a stoppered jug of wine. "Sit, man, sit, sit, sit in the name of Mithras and relax. You are now officially off duty, by my personal dispensation. I need your advice. Here." I took the cup of wine he offered and he sat across from me and raised his cup to eye level. "Let us drink to the health, although we may deplore the wisdom, of Aaron Flavius, pilus prior of the First."

  I raised my own cup. "Gladly," I said, "but why? What's Aaron up to?"

  "What's he up to? An excellent question. Would you trust him?" The question confused me. "Trust him? I don't know, Tribune. It would depend on what was involved. Trust him with what? With my life, in battle? Certainly, of course I would. With my sister, if I had one? Probably not. I don't think I would be that big a fool. Trust is a relatively changeable commodity, Tribune."

  "Hmmm, I agree, and a strange one, too." He slouched further down into his chair, his long, muscular, aristocratic legs stretched out towards the empty brazier in the corner of the room, and took a deep swig of his wine.

  "He came to me in trust, and with a bizarre request, one that required tact, subtlety and diplomacy to a degree I'm not used to finding in centurions, apart from yourself." I held my peace and he continued. "He asked me to arrange a contest between our cohort and his own. He says he likes what he sees happening with our people, and he doesn't think much of his own Tribune or the performance he gets from his troops. That was where he had to be tactful, telling that to me. Anyway, as pilus prior, he believes the only way he'll ever be able to get his own people-excited enough to smarten up is by having us challenge them, unit to unit. He thinks they're likely to see a challenge like that as insulting to their sense of priority. They are, after all, the First Cohort and therefore, by definition, the best soldiers."

  "Ah, but by whose definition, Tribune? They're the senior soldiers, the most experienced, certainly, but the best?" I emptied my cup and he immediately filled it again. It occurred to me as he turned away that I could not think of any other officer who would ever be gracious enough, or sure enough of his own power, to serve a subordinate unselfconsciously.

  "So who are the best?" He spoke over his shoulder. "Ours? What do you think of the challenge idea? Be truthful — this is just between you and me, man to man, out of uniform. Will it work? Can we challenge them? I mean, is it feasible that our men would back the challenge if we made it?" I drank again and thought about the question before answering him. The wine was excellent; a far cry from the thin, sour vinum we drank normally. The question was a complex one. Finally, I shrugged my shoulders and admitted my ignorance.

  "Truthfully, Tribune? I don't know. Had you asked me that a couple of months ago, I would have said no, it's not possible. Today, I honestly don't know. It may be possible, and our men might do it, if..." I stopped there.

  "If what? What, Varrus?"

  "If we — and I suppose that means you — approach it properly. Are we still man to man?"

  "Yes."

  "Good. Aaron Flavius is right. His Tribune, Cirrius, is a complete pig, hated by everyone, including our men. He treats his people like filth, and, as you probably know, he's had several of his rankers flogged to death for petty offences. Well, you may or may not be aware of this, but one of those men was Castor Liger, twin brother to Pollux Liger, our Eight Squad leader."

  Britannicus nodded. "I knew that. Nothing I could do about it. What's your point?"

  "Simply this. Although it's only a gut feeling, and I may be completely wrong, I believe that if you issue the challenge to Cirrius, personally and in public, one cohort commander to another, our people might just be bloody-minded enough to support you." I grinned at him. "After all, they've been cursing you and reviling you for two years, so they're due for a change, and this might be as good a chance as they're going to get. Cirrius is such a complete bastard that he makes you look good." His grin matched my own, his whole face lighting up with the incandescence of his smile. "I'll have your arse for that remark, one of these days, my friend. You think we can beat them?"

  "Repeatedly, Tribune, and ad nauseam."

  "Should we set the date far enough in advance to allow them to prepare?"

  I sat up straight and finished my wine. "Makes no difference, Tribune," I said. "They'll never beat the Second, no matter how hard they try." Britannicus reached for the jug again and refused to listen to my protestations that I had had enough. When he had refilled both our cups, the jug was empty. He replaced it in the cupboard and returned to sit across from me. For a period of time, neither of us spoke.

  "Well," he said, at last, "I'm going to make the challenge, and we'll see what happens. Win or lose, it should shake things up around here." He stopped again and looked at me quizzically, one eyebrow arched high on his forehead. "What about you? How do you feel about your life here? Are you content? Satisfied? Thinking of transferring out?"

  "What? Why would...? No, thank you, Tribune. I am well here, and pleased with my lot. I've no complaints." I was slightly embarrassed by this turn in the conversation, but he
pursued it.

  "You could have ... complaints, I mean. Some might say you should have. It hasn't been easy for you, has it?"

  I was almost squirming now, feeling the blood flushing my cheeks, but still he went on.

  "I want you to know I appreciate your loyalty, all the support you've provided for me over the past two years. It's a large debt, and I intend to repay it."

  I cleared my throat and started to bluster something about having to leave, but he rode right over my protests, finally silencing me by standing up and holding out his right hand, palm towards me.

  "Varrus, trust me," he continued, his face breaking into a grin. "I know what you're thinking. You're thinking your Tribune is losing his grip, losing his feeling for the fitness of things, and you don't want to be around him while he's falling apart. Forget it. I'm not going to embarrass you. But I am going to say what I have to."

  He sat down again as I tried to breathe more easily. "We're very similar in many ways, you and I," he said then. "We are soldiers first and foremost, and we have a rigid and very fine code by which we live. We feel safe operating within that code. When we drift away from it, we lose that feeling of safety. We become embarrassed. But there are some things that aren't dealt with in the code, Varrus. I have some things to say to you that I cannot leave unsaid, and I feel this may be the best time to say them, so let's get them out and deal with them and have done with it.

  "As I said a moment ago, I want to thank you, man to man, for the support you have given me over the past two years. It can't have been easy for you, being perceived as my man while everyone else was loving hating me, but you bore it stoically. I watched and listened and appreciated your loyally. I have been tempted to say something to you long before this, but I guessed it might be better to simply leave you to your own devices. And it was, I think. The men accept you completely now, as one of them, and that is as it should be. And now there's something in the air, something I can't quite define, but I think we may be close to a breakthrough. Aaron Flavius focused my thinking, and I decided to speak my thoughts. There, I've finished, and I will never mention the matter again. But bear in mind, please, that I am in your debt. If ever you need a friend in the future, I will be glad to serve in that capacity." He smiled again, a small quirking of his lips accompanied by a rising eyebrow. "Now you may finish your wine and flee."