by Ian Ross
Even so, as the day stretched on he felt the delay chafing at him. Castus travelled with only three light carts and a carriage, but the young Caesar’s lumbering retinue snaked back behind him, a column of heavy ox wagons and marching men making slow going on the road. Castus had agreed with Bassus that he would remain with the imperial entourage until Vindonissa, but that was two days onwards.
The road crossed a narrow bridge, then angled to the left and climbed steadily through dense woodland, tangled trees and undergrowth barely cut back from the verges. At the top of the slope Castus paused, turning in the saddle to watch the column behind him with gathering impatience.
‘Keep everyone moving,’ he told Diogenes. ‘I’m going back to speak with the Praetorian Prefect, see if we can pick up the pace and steal a march on them.’
The secretary nodded, signalling to a pair of escort troopers to accompany Castus. A quick glance along the road towards the carriage that held Ganna and his son, then Castus was plunging back down the slope again with the two horsemen cantering behind him.
They slowed after only a few hundred yards, meeting the forward units of the Caesar’s retinue and the first of the wagons. Picking their way along the overgrown verge, the three riders traced a path back down the length of the column; Bassus and his own staff were travelling at the rear, and Castus would need to pass the entire mile-long imperial convoy before he could reach the prefect. He was halfway to the bridge when he saw the road opening before him: an expanse of empty rutted mud where there should have been carts and horsemen.
‘Centenarius!’ he shouted back to the commander of the Schola Scutariorum cavalry guard moving slowly up the slope. ‘Why is there a gap in the column? Where’s the Caesar’s carriage?’
The officer wheeled his horse, too slowly for Castus’s liking. He pushed back his cap, blank-faced. ‘I... I don’t know, excellency,’ he said. ‘They were behind us a moment ago... Maybe some problem on the bridge down there...’
At Castus’s warning glance the man’s explanation died. ‘You’re supposed to be guarding him!’ Castus growled, raising himself in the saddle.
The commander’s face paled, and he gulped visibly. ‘Excellency, I...’ Then he realised the implication in Castus’s words, and his eyes widened in shock.
‘After me!’ Castus yelled, dragging at his reins and kicking his boots at the flanks of his horse. His own two guards spurred after him, and he heard the Scutarii commander shouting orders to his men to turn about and follow.
Hooves thundered on the muddy gravel, kicking up sprays of dirt. Already Castus could feel the prickling breath up his back, a sure presentiment of danger. At the angle in the road he saw the mill of figures around the stationary wagons, slaves and soldiers paused in confusion as the mounted cavalcade rushed towards them. A man stepped into Castus’s path, arms raised.
‘Dominus, the way’s blocked on the other side of the bridge!’ he cried.
But already Castus could see the mass of timber and foliage lying across the road: a fallen tree, or several perhaps, with the rest of the column backed up beyond; a gang of soldiers packed the span of the narrow bridge, trying to shift the blockade.
‘Clear the way!’ Castus shouted, and the man in the road darted back at the last moment as the riders swept past him. Now came the first trumpet blast, the call of alarm. At the same instant, the unmistakable sound of fighting.
The troops on the bridge fell back to either side, pressing themselves against the railings as Castus and the mounted men following him galloped between them. The fallen tree was large and old, the trunk shaggy with ivy and the branches thick with foliage. Impossible to see what was happening on the far side, although men were already clambering across, while others scrambled back from the other direction in panic. Letting out his reins, clasping his thighs tight against the saddle leather, Castus spurred his horse at the barricade and hoped she would not shy from it.
Three long galloping strides, and the grey mare launched herself at the obstruction. Castus threw himself forward over the mane, sucking in air through his teeth as his muscles clenched. Hooves crashed through foliage and ivy; then the horse was down on the far side, stumbling only slightly. The impact almost threw Castus from the saddle. Breath heaving as he struggled back upright, he hauled on the reins and fought to control the plunging horse.
One glance took in the scene. Already it seemed he was too late. There, fifty yards away among the stationary carts and wagons, stood the imperial carriage with its distinctive purple drapes and gilded trappings. The door of the carriage was open; dead men on the ground around it; the mounted guard either slain or driven off. From the gulleys and thickets on either side of the road poured men in dirt-brown capes, with shields and spears in their hands. Around each of the wagons the fighting swirled, the enemy cutting down slaves and baggage guards as they tried to flee. Castus stared around himself: where were the rest of the troops? Where was Crispus?
Then a javelin whipped past his head, and he kicked the horse into motion. He wore no armour, not even a helmet, and carried no shield. Pulling his cloak around his body, a scant protection, he drew the eagle-hilted spatha from his scabbard and roared as he charged.
A knot of spears to his right: the mare jinked and swerved, and Castus slashed his blade between the spearshafts and heard a scream of pain. He had never been a good rider, never liked trying to fight from the saddle. His horse was slow and heavy, but powerful and well trained for war; now she was carrying him into the meshes of fighting around one of the wagons. Struggling to stay upright, Castus let the animal’s impetus carry him onwards, blasting aside the first couple of men who opposed him. He lashed his arm back, and felt the spatha’s blade shear through flesh.
Gods, was anyone following him? One of the attackers leaped at him from the wagon bed. Castus dodged the clumsy spear-thrust, turned his horse with the pressure of his knees and leaned from the saddle to stab the man through the throat. He felt calmer in his body now, his muscles warming to the familiar dance of combat. Without thinking he cut down two more men, and let his horse kick another to the ground and then mash him beneath her hooves. But his mind was reeling, senses stretched to comprehend what was happening around him.
The attackers were bearded men, their long hair dyed red and shaved at the sides of the skull. Patterned tunics under their dun cloaks, small round shields with spiked bosses. Castus recognised them: Lentienses, one of the fiercer Alamannic tribes from across the frontier. He remembered his son’s fears of savage men coming across the lake in boats, and his own reply that such a thing was impossible. At least the two troopers who had followed him down the road were still with him, and the first of the Scutarii were riding into the melee.
Clearing the far end of the wagon, Castus stared along the road towards the Caesar’s carriage and dread climbed in his chest. Arrows bristled from the sides of the stationary vehicle. The last mounted guardsman was falling from his horse, a javelin in his side, and now only a pair of soldiers in the white uniforms of the Protectores stood against the attackers. The barbarians had cut the horses from their traces and slain the driver; two of them had clambered up onto the arched roof of the carriage and were stabbing their spears down at the window grilles.
All of this Castus saw in a heartbeat. Then he kicked his horse into a charge, his sword already raised. He could see a figure crouched back against the nearside wheel of the carriage, sheltered by the two Protectores: the Caesar Crispus, a shortsword in his hand, his face shifting from determination to panic.
‘Caesar!’ Castus bellowed as he closed the distance. At the last moment he pulled on the reins, turning the horse around the far side of the carriage. One slicing blow chopped the legs from a man on the roof; the second Alamannic warrior jabbed with his spear, and Castus grabbed at the shaft, pulled, and then drove his blade through the man’s belly as he toppled.
Blood up his arm, and on his horse’s flank. A face appeared at the carriage window: Lactantius, the o
ld tutor. Castus dragged the sword from the dead warrior’s body and let him fall, then nudged the horse onward, circling the carriage at a fast trot. Another barbarian, climbing up the rear of the carriage box, dropped to the ground and fled; Castus let him go.
One of the Protectores was down, injured or dead, but the other was still fighting grimly, hedged about with spears. Castus doubled the rear of the carriage, slashing down from the saddle at one of the warriors before he could raise his shield. From the corner of his eye he could make out the Scutarii forming up across the road. This would be over soon, but the young Caesar was still in danger.
Jumping from the saddle, Castus snatched up a fallen shield and wielded it, smashing the spiked boss at another of the attackers. He caught a spearhead on his sword and turned it, then slid the blade up the shaft, forcing it aside until he could slash at the warrior’s unprotected face.
The second Protector cried out as an arrow struck his leg, and sank to one knee. Behind him, Crispus was pressed against the iron rim of the wheel with his sword raised. A flung spear jarred into the carriage box beside him, but he was paralysed and barely flinched. Two Alamanni ran at him, leaping the fallen bodies of his guards.
Bellowing, Castus took four long strides, his sword wheeling. One of the warriors turned, but too late to block the blow; the heavy spatha bit into his neck and almost decapitated him. The second danced back, spear up. Castus feinted with the shield, saw the man flinch from the bloodied boss, then crouched and drove a stabbing blow upwards with all the strength of his arm. The warrior grunted as the blade pierced him below the ribs, then Castus slammed the shield into his face and he fell.
Horsemen all around them now, the centenarius of the Scutarii screaming orders to his riders. Castus turned to the boy crouched against the carriage wheel.
‘Caesar! Get back inside!’
‘No!’ the boy shouted back. ‘I want to die on my feet, like a man!’
Plenty of men here to do your dying for you, Castus thought. But just for a moment, in the boy’s defiant shout, he had seen a flicker of Constantine’s stubborn rage. His father’s son, after all.
Breathing hard, hefting shield and reddened sword, Castus stood his ground and stared around himself. Most of the attacking warriors had fled before the charging cavalry, and the few that remained were swiftly being cut down. The fight was finished; the emperor’s son was safe.
Castus dropped to one knee and checked on the injured Protector. Blood was pooling beneath him; he must have been hit more seriously before the arrow struck. Not much longer for him now. The other was already dead. Figures were clambering from the gloom of the carriage, joining the young Caesar: first a cringing eunuch, then the old tutor, his white hair in crazed disarray.
‘Praise be to Almighty God!’ the old man cried, raising his palms to the sky. ‘We are saved from the fury of the barbarians! Praise to the Risen Christ for the preservation of His servants!’
Castus wiped the blood from his blade as he knelt beside the dying Protector. ‘It’s the swords of Roman soldiers that saved you, old man,’ he said. ‘You should be praising Mars for your preservation. And Sol Invictus!’
‘Thank you,’ another voice said, and Castus turned to see the young Caesar attempting to sheath his sword with quivering hands. ‘If you had not come, I...’
Castus opened his mouth to speak, to offer some dutiful words. But Crispus’s face had turned grey. A moment later, the boy gasped and sagged against the carriage wheel, then noisily vomited over the spokes.
But now a solid mass of horsemen was coming up the road, Bassus the Praetorian Prefect riding among them. He was managing to appear calm, but his meaty features still quivered with recent terror.
‘You arrived at the crucial moment, I see!’ the prefect cried as he reined in his horse. He paused to draw a long breath, then gazed around him at the scene of slaughter. The air was sweet with the coppery reek of fresh blood. ‘There was another blockade on the road behind us, or we would have got here sooner. Lentienses, I believe. They must have assumed this was a supply convoy, and hoped for good plunder! Few will survive, I suppose, to rue their error...’
Already horsemen were plunging into the thickets on either side of the road, pursuing the fugitives. Castus saw the officer of the Scutarii ordering them on, clearly eager to make up for his earlier failing.
‘Eminence, call the men back!’ Castus said. ‘Order them to keep formation – this might have been a ruse. There could be other attackers...’
Bassus stared at him for a moment with a look of surprised pique. But this was not the moment to observe protocols. The prefect nodded to the trumpeter behind him.
Other attackers... Even as the trumpet notes sounded the recall, Castus felt the spike of ice in his spine. Without another glance he broke into a run. His horse was standing patiently in the road, head down, flanks still heaving. Castus seized the reins and vaulted into the saddle, feeling the ache in his muscles, the first tremors of delayed shock bursting through him. Not yet, I need more time...
‘One more ride,’ he breathed, then kicked at the horse and pulled her head around. The mare responded at once, leaping forward into a canter and then a flat gallop, back up the road towards the barricade and the bridge.
Castus clung to the saddle, his back bent, and felt the sweat tiding down his body. He was primed for the sounds of fighting up ahead, the noise of warriors falling on his own retinue, his own carts, the carriage that held Ganna and his son. The fallen tree was already dragged partway from the road, and Castus galloped around it, the soldiers on the far side falling back as he cleared the hedge of foliage.
On up the road, breathing through clenched teeth, nausea in his gut and a stitch digging at his side, Castus passed the stationary wagons drawn up on the slope, the units of soldiers staring back at him, baffled. By the time he reached the top of the hill his horse was labouring, blowing hard, and he felt every joint in his body jolted out of place.
But there were his carts, his own mounted bodyguard. There was the carriage, Ganna peering from the open door, Diogenes standing beside his horse. Not an enemy in sight.
‘What’s happening?’ Ganna cried as she saw him. Others were riding to meet him, calling out the same question.
‘Nothing,’ Castus said, reining to a halt, breathless. ‘Some trouble down the road. All over now.’
His son was gazing from the carriage window, wide-eyed. Castus remembered that his arm and the flanks of his horse were still spattered with blood, and the sword was naked in his hand. He circled, staring into the trees.
An ambush, he told himself, that was all. A barbarian warband chancing their luck, just as the prefect had said. He drew a long breath and held it. Birds were singing in the trees beside the road, and he ignored the questions, the concern of those around him.
Somehow the barbarians had known just which part of the column to strike, which part to isolate with their barricades. No, Castus thought, this was no simple plundering raid. Such a small group of warriors would never have tried to ambush a heavily armed convoy with cavalry protection. Whoever had directed the attack had known exactly where that one particular carriage would be, and who would be travelling inside it.
CHAPTER V
Heavy sun on the river. The Rhine flowed strong and steady between her green banks, and out in midstream, oars beating slow with the current, the liburnian galley Bellona glided smoothly northwards. It was the third day since they had left the port at Argentorate, and the river ran broader and straighter now, no longer looping and curling between massive wooded bluffs and precipices. The country to either side appeared featureless, empty forests unpopulated by man, but Castus knew that there were settlements among the trees. Several times they had passed fortifications, even walled towns, on the left bank, the Roman side. But on the opposite bank he saw nothing but the occasional herd of scrawny short-horned cattle driven down to water on the muddy shore.
‘Looks placid enough, don’t it?’ t
he navarch said, leaning on the rail of the narrow stern deck. ‘Always the same, along this stretch. You never know what might happen, though. Until it does.’
Castus grunted his agreement. He had only spent a few months on the Rhine frontier, many years ago, but he knew the ways of the barbarians. The Franks to the north and the Alamanni to the south had warred with Rome countless times; a generation back they had poured across the frontiers in massive warbands, laying waste to great swathes of Gaul. Successive imperial campaigns had driven them back, and now the diverse tribes lived under treaty of submission. But they were a fractious people, and every few years an enterprising chieftain would lead a party across the river into the Roman domain. This, he thought, was his command now. Dux Limitis Germaniae: Commander of the Germanic Frontier. By the end of the day he would arrive at Colonia and take up his official duties. For now, this river cruise was a relaxing interval of peace.
The navarch, Aelius Senecio, was a scarred old soldier, and Castus had warmed to him at once. He had lost his left hand in a cross-river raid a score of years ago; the stump was fitted with a carved replacement of dark wood. Both Senecio and his crew belonged to Legion XXII Primigenia, based at Mogontiacum. They were legionaries, and the oarsmen could double as fighting soldiers if required; their shields were mounted along the bulwarks and their weapons and armour stowed beneath the rowing benches. But Castus guessed that a long time had passed since they had fought on land: the sweating, muscled oarsmen looked wedded to their craft. Senecio did too: aboard his ship, he was undisputed master, and Castus enjoyed the man’s lack of deference to his elevated rank.
Senecio clearly loved his ship too. As Praepositus Classis Germaniae, he was acting commander of the whole Rhine fleet, but the Bellona was his special pride. His face creased affectionately as he ran his palm along the deck railing, or paced the long central gangway above the tiers of rowing benches. He scowled hotly if any of his crew missed their stroke, or if his eye detected a fault in the ship’s immaculate paintwork.