Enemy of Rome

XX

Waiting. The waiting was always the most difficult part. In the hour before battle the spirits of the dead came to taunt you with the thousand ends that awaited a soldier. They whispered in your ear like the slave in an Emperor’s chariot during a triumph, intoning You are only mortal. Mortality was a treasured amulet hanging from the neck on a worn leather cord, a coin that had proved its luck in a game of chance, or the memory of a pretty girl in a distant town. Every man understood that the gods could snatch it away at any time of their choosing. In daylight, a legionary might look to his right or left and find reassurance in a smile or a word, but the darkness was like a physical barrier separating each individual.

Before the warning arrows landed a thousand pinpricks of light appeared like twinkling fireflies along the Roman front. Valerius knew they’d be the torches held by enemy engineers leading the individual cohorts and centuries to their pre-planned positions. Valens, or whoever led these men now that Caecina had been caught in his betrayal, would have his own scouts. Even as Valerius had addressed his legion those wily countrymen would have crept up close, trying to identify the exact placing of the Flavian units. Once the cohorts were in position and certain of their angle of attack, the torches would be extinguished and the enemy would be as blind as Valerius. Would they attack? He knew the question must have been haunting Primus since darkness fell less than an hour earlier. Why else march almost five miles from Cremona to a field chosen by their enemy when they could have rested and resupplied and attacked fresh in the morning? As he studied the twinkling lights, Valerius’s greatest concern was that the Vitellian commander would hesitate and Primus would lose patience and order an attack of his own. Unity, cohesion and discipline would win this fight, if there was a winner. He’d heard of night battles of such chaos and confusion that neither side knew who’d won before they retired. In such circumstances, the attacker was at much greater risk of losing his cohesion, stumbling into the darkness over rough ground like a blindfolded boxer. In his enemy’s position Valerius would bring his men in close and launch a lightning, all-out attack. A single flight of pila then five thousand men screaming like banshees over the last twenty paces. An explosive combination of power and surprise calculated to dismay men who’d spent the night waiting in fear of what was to come. But who was his enemy?

‘Send word that I need a prisoner,’ he said quietly to Serpentius. ‘I need to know who I’m fighting.’

The Spaniard disappeared into the darkness and Valerius dismounted, handing his mount’s reins to an aide, and walked through the ranks whispering encouragement as he went. When he reached the front he found Brocchus and his standard-bearers still standing ahead of the main line. He tapped Atilius on the shoulder and ordered him to retire to the centre of the legion. When Atilius was gone he joined the primus pilus.

‘First.’

He could almost feel the man bristle with resentment at his interference. Brocchus didn’t acknowledge the greeting. His eyes never left his front where the lights of the enemy engineers still hovered in the darkness. ‘What’s taking them so long?’ His voice betrayed no fear, only curiosity.

Valerius had been pondering the same question and now he studied the faraway lights all the harder. A silent presence appeared at his right shoulder. Serpentius. ‘Do you see it?’

Valerius swept the darkness until his eyes began to sting from the effort. There. Just for the faintest moment a group of lights in the centre vanished and then reappeared. Vanished again. ‘The clever bastard,’ he whispered, half in admiration.

‘The lights are a feint,’ the Spaniard guessed. ‘They’re on poles so that nothing will be silhouetted against them. There must be a slight rise in the ground and every time a century passes over it the lights go out for a moment.’

‘How far?’

Serpentius hesitated only for a moment. ‘A hundred and fifty paces.’

‘Wait till they’re at thirty.’

He turned to Brocchus and whispered his orders. ‘Pass the word. Pila. Both front ranks. One single cast. The signal will be the screech of a night owl.’ For once there was no hesitation and the centurion marched off into the darkness.

Valerius retreated through the lines of silent armoured figures. Tension made the men shuffle in their places. Sweating left hands shifted on shield grips to get the best hold, and each man measured the familiar weight of the pilum in his right. Somewhere a legionary was reciting a prayer in a muffled whisper, while his comrades cursed him to be quiet lest he attract the attention of an officer. A soft whinny and the jingle of harness from the south announced that Messalla had been true to his word and auxiliary cavalry were moving into place on Valerius’s left.

He had arrayed the legion in the standard defensive formation of four cohorts in three close order lines, each composed of seven hundred and fifty men. Since every man required a fighting space of just over three feet, it meant the Seventh’s front was almost three quarters of a mile wide. Ten paces behind the battle lines, a further three cohorts made up a reserve line which would feed men into the battle as casualties were replaced. A further fifty paces back stood the legion’s strategic reserve of three more cohorts, still in their squares. When the time came — if the time came — Valerius would use these men to capitalize on any enemy weakness or, as seemed more likely, to stem moments of crisis. It was a tidy formation, strong where it needed to be, but flexible enough to react to opportunity or emergency. As he reached Claudius Ferox and the rest of his headquarters staff, the aide returned his reins and helped boost him into the saddle. They were in the gap in front of the reserve cohorts, compact squares twenty men wide and twenty-plus deep. The signiferi, the standard-bearers for the individual cohorts, would be ranged along the rear of the main defence line, with Atilius and his eagle in the centre, surrounded by his hand-picked group of eight bodyguards. How can you direct a battle in the dark? Valerius closed his eyes and opened them again, but it made no difference. His only point of reference was the twinkling lights to the east, and he cursed their attraction when his useless eyes should be probing elsewhere. His ears strained for the faintest noise. Five thousand men couldn’t get within fifty or sixty paces of the line without making a sound. But all he heard was the rasp of his own breathing and the thunder of his heartbeat. ‘You can’t command,’ Messalla had said. ‘So no point in trying. It’s difficult enough to know what’s happening in a normal battle; at night you have to trust your centurions to follow your orders and stay in formation. What you can do is lead. Lead by example. Let them know you’re where the fighting is hardest; they like that. It might only directly affect thirty or forty men, but word will spread. And let them hear you, even if it’s only so they know you’re alive.’ Where was that fornicating owl? Surely they must be close enough by now. But of course they would be just as wary as the men who waited for them. Did all commanders suffer this sense of impotence? Was this how Corbulo felt during that long day watching his men dying before the Parthian King of Kings finally overstepped himself and threw in his Invincibles? Valerius had considered a volley of fire arrows, but discarded the plan because it would illuminate the defenders as well as the attackers. It must only be seconds now, surely? His horse danced under him, sensing its rider’s frustration. Come on.

‘Keeeeeeyick. Keeeeeeyik.’

At first the only sound was the soft flutter as two thousand missiles carved through the night air, but before Valerius had reached the count of three the arrhythmic, staccato clatter of metal on metal filled the night. Within moments screams and agonized groans accompanied the familiar sound as the weighted points of the heavy pila found gaps between armour and below helmets. A momentary hesitation followed that was broken by the strident blast of horns and the screams of ‘Percutite!’ as the attacking commander ordered a charge. The enemy’s roar split the darkness as the unique sound of another hail of javelins landing amongst armoured men announced their reply. More men were screaming, but now they were his.

Valerius had no need to order his legionaries to prepare to receive the enemy charge. They’d drawn their short swords the moment each had launched his single pilum. Now the big shields would be fixed edge to edge in a single unbroken wall. Valerius had never felt so helpless. This was the moment. They must weather the first terrible surge like a breakwater holding back a giant wave. If even one man failed the line would be broken and slaughter would follow. Nothing he did would shape what was to come. The breath seemed to solidify in his chest as he waited. His heart jumped as a crash like thunder began on his far left and rippled all the way along the line in a series of thundering collisions. His horse bucked beneath him and he curbed its antics, fighting the urge to go forward and try to influence what was happening. This was a time for patience. A time for listening and attempting to tease order from the insane clamour of war. Serpentius still hadn’t returned to his side, but how would anyone make out the watchword in this cacophony? It was like being at the centre of a giant bell hammered by demented circus performers. A great roar off to his right announced the clash of two more formations, one of them certainly Aquila’s Thirteenth Gemina. Closer still, on his flank, Messalla’s men would already be fighting, but he concentrated on events immediately around him.

Tension, frustration, fear and anxiety, that was the world of the men in the reserve formations. Not for them the snarling, bitter, animalistic fight for survival of the front line, stabbing at the darkened faces beyond the big scuta and only knowing the enemy by the power of his shield and the quickness of his blade. They must stand and be thankful that, for the moment, they weren’t the ones emitting the screams that announced success and failure alike. In the darkness, a man’s only notion of personal victory came in the unique feel of a sword trapped in living flesh, or the shriek as the point found eye or throat. Yet even that meant little. When one opponent fell away he’d be replaced by another, and the deadly game of blindfold combat would begin again. A soldier could only fight on, knowing that in time his arms would tire, his blade slow and his shield falter. Eventually his defeat would be signalled by the glint of a gladius point, a moment of bowel-draining terror, a searing flash of agony as cold iron sliced through cringing flesh — and the scent of his own blood.

‘I need a man here.’

‘Close the gaps. Get forward there. Quick now.’

The orders rang out in the dark, the centurions urging their reserves forward. Valerius imagined the blood-soaked, mutilated men crawling towards him with their jaws hacked off, their throats slashed or their eyes jabbed out. Even a fine helmet, with its protective cheek pieces and low brow, didn’t entirely protect an armoured man’s face. They’d come with their fingers chopped off, perhaps even the sword hand, because a swordsman must risk exposing his hand. He winced, remembering the moment of exquisite agony and a right hand lost in the ashes of some burned-out British villa. The smell of the blood was tangible now, along with the sewer stink of pierced intestines. Darkness seemed to have made his nose more sensitive, as if it were trying to make amends for his lack of sight.

‘I need men here.’ The centurion’s voice, shriller now, the need more urgent. Valerius’s head whipped round and he tried to gauge from which flank it had come. Should he act? No. They held. For now the Seventh Galbiana was still the effective fighting unit that Marcus Antonius Primus had forged. Valerius must trust centurions he barely knew to make the right judgements. Men like Brocchus, a man of no honour and little integrity, would win this battle or lose it. All he could do was support them. A new clatter of javelins landing among the front rank. More screams and more shouts for reserves. Did that mean that whoever was commanding the enemy had brought up his own reserve cohorts? No, not yet. The battle couldn’t be more than a few moments old.

A rustle in the darkness and he felt the men of his bodyguard stiffen.

‘Tolosa.’

He relaxed at the whispered password. Serpentius. The Spaniard rode out of the darkness. Valerius made out a struggling figure held against his horse’s flank by the collar of his tunic, choking as if he was on the end of a rope. A legionary’s shield lay across the former gladiator’s saddle. ‘He says he’s from the Fifteenth, but I wouldn’t know.’ He dropped the squirming man and brought the shield close so Valerius recognized the symbol on its face, a jagged star around the boss.

‘The wheel of Fortuna. He’s telling the truth. What else does he have to tell us?’

Serpentius leapt from his mount and dragged the cowering legionary to his feet, a wicked curved knife appearing in his hand with the blade at the soldier’s throat. ‘I’m only going to ask once, friend. Who’s in command?’

Valerius heard the pitiless menace in Serpentius’s voice and almost felt sorry for his prisoner. The man swallowed. ‘My legate is the honourable Munius Lupercus. Fabius Fabullus of Fifth Alaudae commands the army of Vitellius.’

‘Not Valens?’ Valerius asked.

‘No, lord. Some men wanted to wait at Hostilia for Valens, but General Fabullus insisted we march for Cremona. They say we covered a hundred miles in three days. I know we did thirty this day past. The men are exhausted. They just want this over.’

‘What word of Vitellius?’

The legionary’s face turned sombre and he shrugged.

‘Very well.’ Valerius turned to his bodyguard. ‘Take him to the rear.’

When the prisoner was gone Serpentius remounted. Valerius beckoned him close. ‘How did it seem to you?’

‘From what I heard we’re holding them. At least in the centre.’ The Spaniard shrugged. ‘As for the rest …’

Valerius nodded. No Valens, but Fabius Fabullus was an unknown quantity. He had driven his men hard from Hostilia to Cremona, but was he too eager for battle? The one-handed Roman felt like a blind man groping his way along a cliff path. He could hear the wind and the waves, but what good was that if there was nothing but fresh air where his foot was about to fall? Five thousand lives depended on his next decision and all he had was his intuition. He called to Ferox.

‘Send an aide to check the reserve line. I need to know if it’s time to feed in another cohort from the squares.’

The guard tensed again as a legionary loomed out of the darkness calling the watchword and dumped something on the ground nearby. ‘What’s that?’ Valerius demanded.

‘You asked for shields,’ Serpentius pointed out. ‘So they’re bringing you shields.’

‘Of course.’ Valerius remembered now. Why had he wanted shields? He had no idea. Still, things seemed to be going remarkably well … Even as the thought formed he froze in the saddle at a great howl from his right flank.

‘What …’

‘Flank attack.’ Claudius Ferox’s voice betrayed his fear.

Valerius reacted instantly. ‘Take the Ninth and Tenth cohorts and do what you can to stop them. Send a runner once you have an idea of their strength.’

Ferox galloped to the reserves, already shouting orders, and Valerius spent the next long nerve-grating moments in a turmoil of frustration before the runner returned.

‘Tribune Ferox reports that he is facing an entire new legion and begs for further reinforcements.’

‘Which legion?’

‘Fifth Alaudae, lord.’

Valerius closed his eyes. Otho’s bane at Bedriacum, and now they were coming for him.