The Mask of Command

by Ian Ross

  He picked his way back down the grassy slope of tumbled wall and returned to the camp on the riverbank. It was noon, the second day since he had rejoined them on the river, and the flotilla had finally halted to rest ashore. It would only be a brief respite: this old fort now marked the boundary of the Chamavi domain, and Castus wanted to press on upriver under cover of night. His spells at the oars had left him exhausted, his back aching and the muscles of his shoulders and neck iron-taut. But he could not allow any delays now.

  ‘Dominus,’ Modestus said, striding up to meet him. ‘A couple of the barbarian scouts have just come back. They say they found tracks leading up from the riverbank just upstream of here – thousands of men crossing the river and moving south, it looked like.’

  Castus stared away to the south. There was a track across the wilderness in that direction, leading to the River Vahalis ten miles away and the fort and town of Noviomagus on the far side. He had considered disembarking the bulk of his men here and marching them onward by land, but with a strong enemy force now ahead of them that would be impossible. He peered at the horizon, looking for smoke trails, but could see nothing.

  ‘This was where your last commander died, I think.’

  Castus flinched, startled; he had not noticed Bonitus joining him.

  ‘The interpreter told you that?’

  Bonitus nodded. ‘Maybe in this very spot, hmm?’

  Suppressing a quick superstitious shudder, Castus looked around him at the dense green bushes, the stands of ragged trees. He was still grieved by the idea that Dexter, an officer he had liked and trusted, had been involved in the murder – but if Bappo had been present, that was surely the truth. Hard to imagine Leontius, a man he had known well, meeting his end in this forsaken place. Struck down by his own troops. He stared across the camp ground at the knots of tired men gathered around the cooking fires and the piquet of armed sentries beyond. So far, there had been no eruptions of insubordination, no whispers of mutiny. Or not as far as he knew. But they were still in no man’s land, on the border of barbaricum. Once they reached more settled country, within reach of the Roman forts, would the men continue so gladly?

  A cry from the far perimeter broke into his thoughts, and he glanced up to see a pair of horsemen approaching along the track from the southward. The sentry guards were already mustered to block them, shields ready and spears levelled. But even from where he was standing, Castus could see that the riders were Roman. Flinging his cloak back over his shoulder, he strode between the fires to meet them.

  One of the men had already dismounted, while the other stayed in the saddle watching the surrounding land. Both wore green tunics, and Castus recognised the blazon on the shields slung on their saddle horns. They were men of the Numerus Batavorum, from Noviomagus. Had the garrison there managed to hold out?

  The dismounted rider turned as he approached, but did not salute; Castus reminded himself that he was still dressed as a common soldier, and a very grimy and sweat-stained soldier at that. One of the sentries muttered to the man, and he stiffened slightly to attention, but still looked dubious.

  ‘You’re from Noviomagus?’ Castus said.

  ‘Yes... excellency,’ the rider replied, cocking his head. ‘We got reports of ships coming up the river, and the tribune sent us to take a look.’

  ‘Have you seen the enemy?’

  ‘Seen them? They’ve been pouring across the Vahalis for three days and three nights. Burned the town and slaughtered most of the people, never mind they’re kin to them... They surrounded us in the fort, a good four thousand of them at least. We’ve only got two hundred of us left in the garrison, so we couldn’t move out against them.’

  Castus shrugged, nodding for him to continue.

  ‘We saw their leader. Their king. Ragnachar. He rode all round the walls, just out of bowshot. If we’d had a ballista we could’ve picked him off. Then they moved away in bands, heading south.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Yesterday, the last of them cleared out. We’ve been scouting and bringing in survivors ever since.’

  Ragnachar. Castus remembered the name well, and the proud figure that had stood on the riverbank the previous summer as he made his demand for hostages. He remembered the man’s distress and humiliation too. Had his son, Conda, joined him on this invasion? Both would be eager to avenge themselves on Rome, and on Castus himself in particular. Calculations flickered through his mind. Time and distances. If this was the main attack from the north, and it had passed through only the day before, was there still time to reach Colonia ahead of them and regain command of the defences?

  ‘Get back to your tribune,’ he said. ‘Give him my congratulations on his defence, and tell him to hold his position until relieved.’

  ‘Yes, dominus,’ the scout said, saluting. ‘We will do what we are ordered, and at every command we will be ready!’ He still had a quizzical look. ‘Funny thing is, though,’ he said, ‘everyone’s been saying you’re dead.’

  CHAPTER XXVII

  Twenty-four hours later, the flotilla hauled around the last bend of the Rhine and came into sight of the fortress of Tricensima. A parched cheer went up from the men on the rowing benches as they craned back for a glimpse of the reassuring battlements and buttress towers. No plumes of dark smoke rose from within, and the banner still flew above the northern gate. All appeared calm; the fortress still remained in Roman hands.

  In fact, Castus thought as the galleys swung across the broad reach of the river and backed towards the muddy shore, there was little sign that the people in the fortress were even aware of the barbarian attack. No patrols guarded the riverbank, no horsemen rode from the gates to meet them. As the weary oarsmen from the galleys clambered ashore, Castus left Modestus in charge and marched up the track towards the fortress gates. He took Felix with him, and Eumolpius, with a trumpeter and six men of the Second Britannica as an escort. His personal draco standard had been lost in the wreck of the Bellona, and none of the other units under his command had one.

  The track led them up through the overgrown ruins of the city that had once stood here, before the fortress was rebuilt on a smaller plan. Away to the left, Castus could make out the hulk of the old amphitheatre, now almost lost in a thicket of trees; the old grid of streets now formed the divisions between vegetable plots. Though only a vestige of the old legion fortress it replaced, Tricensima was still the most powerful stronghold on the Rhine frontier. Impossible that the commander here should not have learned of the barbarian assault.

  ‘Halt and identify yourselves!’ a voice cried from the gatehouse tower. The gates remained closed. Castus peered upwards and saw helmeted heads along the rampart walkways, and the iron arches of ballistae.

  ‘Shall I do this?’ Felix asked.

  Castus nodded. Behind him, the trumpeter blew three sustained notes.

  ‘Open the gates, in the name of the emperor!’ Felix shouted, in a surprisingly powerful voice. ‘Open the gates for his excellency Aurelius Castus, vir perfectissimus, Commander of the Germanic Frontier!’

  Shouts from inside the gatehouse, the sounds of argument. Castus waited. Then the noise of the heavy timber barring the gate grating against wood. The gate creaked open, and a figure walked out into the sunlight.

  ‘Dominus!’ Diogenes said with a pale smile. ‘My apologies – the prefect here ordered them to keep the gates closed. They thought the barbarians had killed you all and stolen your ships!’

  ‘Diogenes...’ Castus said as he paced closer, surprised recognition turning quickly to acid dread. ‘What are you doing here? Why are you not at Colonia...? Where’s my son?’ He seized the man by the shoulders, then flinched, choking. ‘And what’s that fucking awful stink?’

  ‘Sorry, I can’t seem to wash it off... Many things have happened. Come inside. We need to talk. Things are not good, brother.’

  The tone of Diogenes’ voice was quite enough to confirm Castus’s apprehensions. He set his jaw, nodded, and then
followed the secretary into the fortress with his escort marching behind him.

  Inside the walls, they moved swiftly along the broad central avenue towards the headquarters building, which occupied a converted wing of the enormous old bathhouse. All along the street, soldiers of the garrison lined the wooden porticos. Some saluted, while others just stared, either with hopeful smiles or expressions of confusion. As they walked, Diogenes spoke quickly and quietly, telling Castus about what had happened at Colonia: the governor seizing power, Rufus’s appointment as commander, the arrest of Diogenes himself and Castus’s remaining staff. ‘They sent men into the Praetorium to take us,’ he said. ‘We thought of resisting, but... they already had your son.’

  Castus’s step faltered, and he pressed a fist to his mouth to stop himself crying out. ‘Where have they taken him?’ he managed to say.

  ‘Tiberianus took him to his own residence. So I heard afterwards. They’ve declared you an enemy of the state too – all troops at Colonia have been ordered to seize or kill you.’

  ‘Ha!’ Castus shouted. He smacked his fist into his palm.

  As they covered the last distance, Diogenes quickly told of his escape, the stumble through the sewer and his voyage downriver in a canoe with only a single oar. ‘I arrived this morning. Haven’t had time to wash properly or change my clothes...’

  ‘The eunuch freed you, you said? Luxorius, the prefect’s chamberlain?’

  ‘I’m sure it was him, yes. The gods alone know what he was doing there. He told me specifically to find you and report everything that had happened, so you don’t walk into a trap.’

  What was the eunuch’s game now? Castus remembered meeting him that night at Noviomagus, before the Caesar’s meeting with the barbarians. He had suspected him then. He shook his head – there were enough other things to worry about without considering the schemes of eunuchs.

  Inside the headquarters building, they found the commander of the fortress waiting for them in his private chamber. He already had a pale and queasy look of apprehension. As Castus entered he stood up from behind his table, saluting awkwardly.

  ‘You’ve kept your garrison within the walls,’ Castus declared, without a word of greeting. ‘You’ve made no effort to patrol the surrounding area or secure the river. Why?’

  ‘Excellency,’ the commander said, his jaw trembling. He rubbed his balding scalp. ‘Until we received better intelligence, I thought it prudent...’

  ‘Where was this better intelligence supposed to come from?’ Castus growled. He took four paces across the room and planted his fists upon the table. The commander sank back down into his seat. Castus glared at him, until the man quailed and looked away.

  ‘You are hereby stripped of your command,’ Castus ordered, striding away from the table again. ‘Your drillmaster, who I believe is a capable man, will take charge of the fortress in your place.’

  ‘Excellency!’ the commander said, his stool toppling to the floor as he stood up. ‘I must protest! I’ve done nothing...’

  ‘Exactly, you’ve done nothing!’ Castus bellowed, turning on his heel and stabbing a finger at the man. His words echoed around the chamber. ‘Now – one more word from you and I’ll have you arrested for mutiny. And I’ll execute you my-fucking-self!’

  Striding outside, Castus stood in the bright sunlight at the head of the steps, flexing his knuckles. He had a strong desire to hurt somebody. But he knew that his real target was still many miles south, at Colonia. A wave of fatigue passed through him, darkness filling his mind. He blinked, and saw a party of soldiers from the Thirtieth Legion in mud-stained tunics filing across the gravel yard, heavy baulks of timber across their shoulders. The fort commander had apparently decided to take this opportunity to strengthen the defences. The officer leading the work party was a lean, rangy man with a bristling black beard. Even without the fur hat he had been wearing before, Castus recognised him.

  ‘You, centurion,’ he called from the top of the steps. ‘Formerly of the Fifth Praetorian Cohort and Thirteenth Legion Gemina. Am I right?’

  The bearded man halted, the file of men behind him dropping their loads to the gravel. ‘You’re not wrong,’ he said, with a smile. ‘I remember a face too, excellency. Though you’re not looking your best, if I may say so.’

  ‘Could say the same for you,’ Castus replied.

  The ex-Praetorian spread his arms, peering down at his shabby tunic with an exaggerated grimace. The men behind him snorted with laughter; most of them were clearly older veterans of the Guard as well.

  ‘How many of you are there here?’ Castus asked.

  ‘From the old cohorts? Three hundred of us left here, more or less. Fewer with every winter.’

  ‘I saw barges down by the river. Can your men row?’ He saw the centurion’s quick look of disgust at the prospect. ‘We’re a long way from the Palatine now,’ he added.

  ‘If you’re taking us to war, dominus,’ the centurion said, with a wry smile, ‘sure, we’ll row all the way to the Alps if you want.’

  Back inside, Castus gave the orders to Diogenes and the new commander of the fortress. His men needed to be resupplied with food, arms and equipment, the wounded men taken to the hospital and replacements drawn from the garrison, and barges prepared to embark three hundred men of the Thirtieth for immediate departure. While his secretary and the commander’s staff set to work, Castus paced across to the window. He pushed open the shutter and gazed across the roofs of the barrack buildings towards the gatehouse, and the banner hanging slack in the midday stillness. His back and shoulders ached from rowing, and soon the torment would begin again.

  More than eighty miles of river separated Tricensima from the city of Colonia. How long would it take them, at their present speed? More importantly, Castus thought, did his men still have the strength to do it? Most were already ground down to their last reserves of stamina. Push them any harder, and the number of injuries would increase; the number dropping from heat and exhaustion would increase, too. If he ever reached Colonia, his troops would be too fatigued, too depleted, to fight.

  He felt the darkness sinking through him. All of his plans, all of his desperate energy, had led to nothing. Failure on every side. The barbarians and the men who had seized control of the province would fight it out between them, and there was nothing that he could do about it.

  Then, just as he turned away from the window, a flicker of movement caught his eye. He glanced back. The banner over the gate was lifting, eddying on the breeze. Castus stared, frowned, uncertain of the direction. Modestus and two oarsmen were running across the gravelled yard, waving up at him.

  South, he realised; the banner was blowing towards the south. He slammed his fist down on the sill of the window, with a shout that brought Diogenes and the clerks to their feet. They had their following breeze.

  *

  Under cover of darkness, the ships ghosted up the wide channel of the Rhine with slow strokes of their oars. The wind that had carried them southward for two days had almost died away now, but it had served them well; Castus had vowed to sacrifice to the gods for it, if ever he got the chance.

  The long bridge that connected Colonia Agrippina with the fort of Divitia on the eastern bank was a tracery of blackness across the moon-grey river. Beyond the fort, fires were burning. Inland too – trails of sparks were lifting from the darkened land, and the fort’s walls showed clearly in the glow of the flames. There were a few scattered fires on the opposite bank, also; some of the barbarians must have paddled over in boats to pillage the area around the city. Bructeri, Castus guessed. Ganna’s people, from the densely forested hill country to the east. In the still air, the men on the ships could hear the distant roaring of the barbarians around their camp fires, the bursts of laughter and anger, the shouts of defiance. Both fort and city remained silent.

  The galleys slowed, then took up position with the oars working to hold them in the current. Castus climbed from the deck of the Satyra into one of the smalle
r scout vessels, the eighteen-oared Lucusta. Beyond the galleys, his three original troop barges had been joined by five larger vessels carrying the ex-Praetorian veterans of the Thirtieth Legion. Bonitus’s Frankish war boats slipped between them, lookouts at every prow.

  ‘Take us upstream, as close to the bridge as you can get without being spotted,’ Castus told the helmsman, as Diogenes and Felix dropped down into the scout galley behind him. The rear oarsmen fended off at once, and the narrow hull of the Lucusta moved smoothly against the current with only a ripple of water. Castus clambered forward, stepping over the rowing benches, until he could stand braced behind the prow of the galley and watch the riverbanks, the walls of the city and the fort, and the bridge between them.

  He remembered the last time he had tried to get into a besieged city in darkness. That had been many years ago, back in Britain, when he and Marcellina were escaping from the Picts. He had narrowly escaped death, then, only to be imprisoned as a deserter. He wasn’t about to make that mistake again, especially now the defenders had orders to kill him: marching up to the gates and demanding entry was a good way to get himself shot with an arrow or ballista bolt. During the long hours of the voyage south from Tricensima he had thought over his options. The fetid sewer that Diogenes had used as an escape tunnel was too narrow for a large force of men; and there were too many chances of being discovered and trapped down there: a terrifying thought. But perhaps the bridge was the key. Castus knew that the garrison in the fort on the east bank must have an open supply route across the river from the city. The trick would be to get between them somehow.

  ‘Ready to go,’ a voice said, and Castus turned to see Felix crouched in the scuppers. The optio wore only a dark tunic, and his long sinewy arms and bony face were smeared with black river mud. He looked like a creature from nightmare as he grinned. His sling was wrapped tight around his fist. Castus had guessed that his unusual collection of skills might come in useful; now he would be proved right.