Defender of Rome

XIX

‘Forget Cornelius Sulla. He’s no longer our affair.’

Marcus looked up, startled, but the raw edge to Valerius’s voice barred any further questions.

‘Can Serpentius and Heracles ride?’

The old gladiator eyed him suspiciously. ‘Of course. We’re all trained to fight on horseback as well as we do on foot.’

‘I want you to use the Emperor’s seal to purchase three horses, preferably cavalry trained, and two pack mules. We’ll need them in three days.’

‘Are we going to fight a war?’

‘I hope not, but we are going to join a legion.’

Marcus laughed in disbelief. ‘Which legion?’

‘The Seventh.’

A week later they stood on the dock at Aternum as the horses were loaded on to the merchant ship on which Valerius had arranged passage to Dalmatia. Sextus and Felix remained in Rome to watch Lucina Graecina. Cornelius Sulla’s death made it less likely she would provide them with a link to Petrus, but with so few leads Valerius couldn’t afford to ignore the possibility. The four-day ride over Italia’s mountainous spine had saved them at least another week’s sailing and had the added bonus of accustoming them to the saddle, which would be vital for what awaited them on the other side of the Mare Adriaticum.

‘Why is Publius Sulla so important?’ The question was from Marcus and Valerius’s reply had been simple: ‘Because he is the next link in the chain.’ But nothing in the clandestine world he now inhabited was so straightforward. The truth was that Cornelius had revealed under torture that his brother was an even more important figure in Petrus’s organization than Cornelius himself.

‘Publius Sulla is building a network of Christus followers in the legions,’ Torquatus had grudgingly revealed. ‘If he succeeds it will provide them with a platform to combine a military attack on Rome with a rising in the city itself. Their numbers may be small, but the one thing we have learned is that this cancer spreads quickly. It is possible that he has already involved the general of a legion. If so, we need to discover who this traitor is and destroy him. That is why it is so important to reach Publius Sulla and return him to Rome.’

‘Why not get the commander of the Seventh to arrest him? It would be much easier.’

Torquatus had tried to avoid the question, but Valerius persisted. ‘Very well. General Vitellius has the Emperor’s confidence, but we must be certain. A legion’s loyalty and its control lie in the hands of a few senior officers. If we are wrong, it could bring the traitors out into the open before we are ready to act. That would weaken the frontier, and, worse, open up the possibility that other disaffected or ambitious commanders might join the rebels. You have Rome’s future in your hands, and your own. Do not mistake me, Verrens, this is a test of your allegiance as well as your ability.’

Marcus and the men accepted their new role without complaint, but Valerius kept his next surprise until just before they boarded the ship.

‘You are now honorary members of the Praetorian Guard.’ He made the announcement in the dockside tavern where they were waiting. Serpentius looked horrified when Valerius produced the black tunics, silver-plated chest armour and helmets he had requisitioned from the Praetorian barracks, but Heracles, the muscle-bound youngster who had tracked Lucina, grinned with anticipation. ‘The tunics and helmets should do well enough and if the breastplates don’t fit we’ll get the armourer of the Seventh to alter them.’

As they waited to board, Serpentius fiddled with his helmet strap. Valerius doubted the Spaniard would ever look comfortable in a Roman uniform. He explained again why it was so important to wear the armour.

‘You have to understand what it is to be part of a legion. The Seventh, Claudia Pia Fidelis, is one of the elite units of the Roman army. It fought with Julius Caesar in the Gallic wars a century ago and won its title putting down the Scribonianus rebellion to keep Claudius in power. Its men are fighting soldiers who’ve just moved from their base on the Rhenus to Viminacium, right up on the Dacian border. They won’t welcome anyone who looks like a ration thief, and a nosy civilian investigating one of their officers could end up having an unhappy accident. But if he’s a Praetorian tribune with an escort of tough-looking veterans he’s at least going to have their respect.’

The voyage took them three days and nights and if any sea journey, with all its attendant threat of shipwreck, mishap or monster, could be described as pleasant, this one was. Balmy winds lightly ruffled the wave tops and the only sounds were the occasional barked command, the gentle rush of the waters beneath the bow and the rhythmic creak of ropes and timbers that is the heartbeat of a ship.

On the morning of the fourth day the captain shook Valerius awake and he rose to find a grey-green strip on the far horizon.

‘Land,’ the seaman explained. ‘We’re a little north of where we ought to be, but with these winds we should make port at Acruvium before noon.’

Two hours later they were sailing directly towards what looked like a continuous stretch of unwelcoming, mountainous coastline. Just as Valerius was doubting the captain’s sanity they turned into the hidden entrance to a broad inlet which narrowed, widened, then narrowed again before opening into a curiously shaped bay with a small harbour at the southern end. A circle of rugged peaks loomed over them like the walls of a gigantic prison cell and Valerius noticed his companions warily eyeing the mountains. Serpentius, whose tribe inhabited the inhospitable hills of northern Hispania, met his eye.

‘Hard. Just like home. Takes hard people to live in a place like this; hard as the rocks. They know how to survive and they know how to kill and they know how to hate. Why would you Romans want a place where they sleep in the snow and learn to chew stones before they learn to speak?’

‘Because of what lies beyond it,’ Valerius explained patiently. ‘Since Caesar’s time the barbarian tribes have been moving westwards, increasing the pressure on those who already hold the lands along the Danuvius and the Rhenus. The Empire doesn’t have enough legions to contain such a huge migration of peoples, so she uses what she has. Rivers and mountains. To hold the Danuvius, Rome must first hold Dalmatia, Pannonia and Moesia. That’s why we want a place like this.’

Serpentius spat. What did he care for Rome’s ambitions?

Acruvium turned out to be a small anchorage which was one of the few sheltered landing points on a hundred miles of coast. Valerius presented his travel warrant to the port prefect and requested an escort. The officer laughed when he read their destination. He was one of the young men Rome always sent to her far frontiers: polite, educated, capable and expendable. If he lived, a fine career awaited him when he returned home. If he didn’t, only his family would mourn him. ‘I have two clerks, and a dozen Thracian auxiliaries who are good for stopping bar fights. I can give you one of them to guide you as far as Doclea, but my advice would be to wait here for the next ship back to Italia and get on it. Viminacium is six days east of here if you happen to be a bird, but you’re not birds and that means at least twelve days along the river valleys through the mountains, which is the only way to get anywhere in Dalmatia; first south, then east. Baked by the sun during the day, chilled to the bone at night. And that’s if Fortuna smiles on you.’

‘And if she doesn’t?’

‘If she doesn’t you’ll end up dead — or, worse, not dead — among the cruellest people on this earth. See those two over there.’ Valerius followed his glance to a pair of squat, hawk-faced villains seated on boulders near the landing place. The men had the watchful intensity of hungry vultures and wore their dark, oily hair in braids. Their outer clothing was fashioned from part-cured goatskin that Valerius could smell from twenty paces away. ‘Illyrian bandits,’ the young man explained. ‘But then everyone around here is a bandit when he’s not trying to scrape a living from soil that’s an inch deep and only grows rocks. They’ve seen your armour and your horses and they reckon they could barter them to their chief for enough provisions to feed their families for a year. That makes you worth a risk. But then again they would probably have a slap at you just for fun. Their favourite method of passing the time with a prisoner is to flay him alive an inch at a time and then impale him on the branch of a thorn tree.’

Valerius shrugged. He’d heard such tales before. ‘Why don’t you kill them?’

‘We do.’ The port prefect smiled wearily. ‘We’ve been killing them for a hundred years. The only problem is you can’t kill them all.’

They left before sunrise after a night in the prefect’s quarters with their swords never far from their sides. The narrow mountain tracks confirmed their host’s information and they moved cautiously. At one point their guide stopped and studied a narrow gully ahead, his eyes scanning the rocks and scrubby bushes. Without a word he turned and they rode two miles back to where another poor road branched off, rejoining the main track an hour later.

They reached Doclea just before nightfall, a substantial and surprisingly sophisticated city laid out on Roman lines, cupped in a broad bowl in the mountains near an enormous lake which provided the local people with their main diet of fish. This time the administrator was a harassed older man who answered to the legate at Burnum, a hundred and eighty long miles to the north, and Valerius was forced to show the seal before he agreed to provide an escort. ‘But only as far as Naissus. That’s where the traders gather to carry their goods up to the market at Viminacium. You’ll be able to join a convoy there. They believe in strength in numbers.’

They crossed the border into Moesia Superior the next day, but no one noticed the difference. The mountains still crushed down on them with all their dangerous, intimidating beauty; a cursed grandeur that could kill you even as you admired it. Occasionally they would hear the sound of muted thunder and see the dust cloud over some distant valley that marked an avalanche, or the ground beneath their feet would tremble, and Valerius would make the sign against evil in the knowledge that in this gods-forsaken place Hades could not be far below.

When they joined the convoy at Naissus and took the river road east, he relaxed for the first time. Here they were surrounded by men who knew their business as well as any legionary: mercenaries, former auxiliaries contracted by the rich merchants who had organized the caravan. He’d seen men like these before: Scythians with long curved swords, Thracian mounted archers who lived in the saddle and could put an arrow through your eye at fifty paces, tough little Raetian spearmen with constitutions like camels and legs that would march forty miles in a day. More exotic still was a group of strange gold-haired, bearded men from some chilly northern land, carrying lethal double-headed axes. They wore a motley collection of uniforms or part-uniforms that appeared to represent half a dozen countries and fifteen or twenty different units. Plumed and spiked helmets, exotic fish-scale shirts or armour made of padded cloth. They looked tough and uncompromising. The merchants kept their goods covered, partly to avoid attracting the bandits who watched with greedy eyes from the hills, and partly to avoid tempting the escort, who had been known to cut a few throats and run off with some particularly rich cargo.

At first, merchants and escort alike suspiciously eyed the black tunics and silver breastplates that marked them as members of the Emperor’s elite. But gradually the barriers fell as they mixed around the campfires as honest travellers do, and tested their languages against each other. Of them all, Serpentius was most at home among the escort, exercising with them in the cool of the morning and testing the legionary gladius against the curved swords of the Scythians or hefting the heavy axes of the northern giants.

‘You would have done well as an auxiliary, Serpentius,’ Valerius advised him, as they rode side by side at the head of the convoy in the dusty heat of the afternoon. ‘You could still; you are young enough. Twenty-five years and a pension and Roman citizenship at the end of it.’

The Spaniard’s look darkened. ‘I am an honoured member of my tribe, even now, though I am a slave. The Romans killed my family. Why would I wish to fight for Rome and become a Roman?’

‘Sometimes it is more sensible to put the past behind you than to allow it to control you. As long as I have the Emperor’s seal I can arrange it. There is no need to die in the arena.’

Serpentius solemnly lifted his bald head and the dark eyes glittered. ‘Serpentius alone chooses where he lives and where he dies.’ His face broke into a grin. ‘Wasn’t it you who told me I could die in my own time?’ He whipped up his horse and rode on to range ahead of the column, but almost in the same instant whirled and screamed at Valerius.

‘Ambush!’

Valerius used his knees to turn his horse towards the column about two hundred paces back down the rough dirt track. The reins were wrapped around the wooden fist of his right hand and with his left he drew his sword. Arrows zipped past his head and he ducked low in the saddle as he frantically scanned the roadside for threats. A running figure armed with a long wooden spear came at him from his right and he swerved to avoid the point as it sought out his mount’s undefended flank. The manoeuvre brought him close to a raised bank on the opposite side of the track and he heard Serpentius shout a warning. Too late. A second ambusher launched himself from the top of the mound and smashed him from the saddle. Valerius landed with a sickening crash that knocked the wind from him and rattled the helmet from his head. He was stunned by the impact, but his years of training took over. For most military tribunes, service in the legions was merely a step towards a career in politics. They stayed six months, making themselves useful or not, and if they didn’t die in some Brigantean forest or German swamp they went home. But not Valerius. He had discovered, to his own surprise as much as anyone’s, that he was a true warrior; a natural soldier who enjoyed the challenges of campaigning and could kill without hesitation or conscience. Two years in Britain, and the Boudiccan rebellion, had taught him to survive.

He rolled away from the threat and came to his feet in a single movement, crouching to meet his attacker with his sword held low ready to stab at guts or groin. This wasn’t the battle line, it was gutter fighting, but Valerius knew all about gutter fighting. It was about doing whatever it took to win. He noticed with only mild surprise that his opponent was one of the Illyrians who had been waiting at the dock in Acruvium. Dark and feral, the bandit held a long curved knife. He’d be fast and he’d be confident. A scuffling from behind alerted Valerius to a new danger and he half turned to find the spearman fifteen paces away and running towards him. The spear held no fears for the Roman, but the man with the long knife was an added complication. By now Valerius’s horse had struggled to its feet and he backed away, placing the frightened animal between himself and the enemy who had knocked him from the saddle. The move won him vital seconds and he advanced on the spearman to provoke an attack. The Illyrian’s face broke into savage grin and he thrust the point at Valerius’s throat, which was what the Roman had counted upon. He stepped towards the point, angling to his left, and used the walnut fist of his right hand to parry the blow. The spearman had been forced to aim high because of the breastplate protecting Valerius’s chest and stomach and it allowed the Roman to knock the point clear of his right shoulder. At the same time he spun down the length of the spear shaft, slicing the gladius edge into his enemy’s skull. The shock surged up his arm as the iron blade met solid bone and a smear of crimson stained the air. His opponent dropped like a stone, but he had no time to celebrate victory. The spin brought him face to face with his other foe, who by now had worked his way round the horse and was preparing to plunge the knife into his back. The sight of the bloody gladius made him pause, but he jabbed the blue-green blade at Valerius’s eyes as he sought the weakness that would give him an advantage. He had to get close, but the Roman’s skill with the short sword kept him just out of range for a decisive thrust. The Illyrian danced right and left, seeking an opening, and Valerius was reminded of his bout with Serpentius. Don’t fight like a one-handed man, or a two-handed man. Fight like a killer. Marcus’s words made him smile. The assassin saw the grin and for the first time he felt doubt. He’d seen what had happened to his companion, but that only meant the spoils would be all the greater. All he had to do was kill as he had killed many times before. The smile made it different. The smile meant he faced a man who wasn’t cowed by his speed and who would meet his aggression with aggression. The smile meant he needed a way out. But Valerius wasn’t going to give him a way out. Fight like a killer. He used his own speed and the left-handed sword to keep his opponent off balance, always looking for the opening. He saw the wild eyes flick to the left as a scream told him Serpentius too was keeping his attackers busy. The Illyrian was ready to run when Valerius gave him his opportunity. A slight stumble left his right side open to the knife. The blade flicked out like a viper’s strike, but the Roman met it with his wooden hand. Designed to hold a shield, it was shaped like a partially closed fist, and now the fist caught the knife blade and twisted in the same movement. A normal hand would have been cut to the bone, but this was no normal hand. The seasoned walnut bent the inferior iron of the knife and trapped it in its grip. The Illyrian frantically tried to tug the blade free even as Valerius drove the gladius deep into his body. The point entered below the breast bone and the force of it drove a grunt of agony from the assassin’s throat. Still he kept his grip on the dagger. Only when Valerius twisted the short sword free and the blood spurted from the terrible wound in his abdomen did the dying man collapse to his knees.

Valerius turned to find Serpentius calmly leading his horse towards him, his sword bloody to the hilt. A dozen men came running from the direction of the convoy. The Illyrian spearman’s heels still twitched in the dust and someone cut his throat as Valerius’s horse snickered nervously over his body. The other man rocked back and forth on his knees, his dark head bowed over his chest and his hands attempting vainly to hold in his insides. As Valerius watched he vomited a fountain of dark heart blood and rolled slowly forward on to his face.

Two riders appeared from beyond the bank where the ambushers had struck and threw a filthy, ragged bundle at Valerius’s feet; a boy of about ten, who immediately began pleading in a language the Roman couldn’t understand.

The Scythian veteran commanding the escort spat on the sprawled youth. He snarled an order to the two men, and followed them as they dragged the boy away. Valerius tried not to hear the screams.

A few minutes later the Scythian returned. ‘He was holding the ponies back there and would have had his share of this.’ He tossed a leather bag to Valerius, who caught it in his good hand. ‘Silver. Enough to make them lords of these hills.’

‘Who paid them, and why?’

‘He said he did not know who. These people learn to lie with their first breath, but I doubt this one lied. He claimed it was a Roman who gave them the order and the silver, and they all look the same to him. As to why, it is simple. They were to kill the officer with the missing hand. They have followed us for a week to ensure they had the right man. The cargo was of no interest to them, my Roman friend. Only you.’