Enemy of Rome

XXIII

In the starlit darkness, Serpentius set a steady pace over fields flattened by the march and counter-march of thousands of legionaries. This was when the Spaniard came truly alive, when he felt the blood surging through his veins and an almost god-like belief in his ability to move unseen and unheard through the landscape. Without the clumsy militia men he would already have been halfway to his destination, but he couldn’t destroy the catapult on his own. He hissed a warning to Celer as he was about to plunge into a narrow drainage ditch and the prefect passed the alert on to the men behind. On the way, Serpentius picked up a fallen legionary’s helmet. With the big shield it gave him a silhouette familiar to the men of either side. He kept his spatha sheathed and carried the long-handled axe comfortably in his right hand. Somewhere out there in the darkness lay the big catapult. He had no doubt he could lead these men to it. The question was which route to take.

The causeway of the Via Postumia was perhaps two hundred paces to the left and would provide the most direct passage. To reach it they would have to pass through the rear ranks of the legion whose swords the Spaniard could hear beating against the shields of the as yet unyielding Thirteenth Gemina. There was also the possibility of bumping into small groups of survivors from the attack against the Seventh Galbiana’s right flank. So far there’d been no sign of the Praetorians Celer had mentioned and Serpentius guessed they’d overcome the enthusiasm of the first flush of victory and prudently retired to the Flavian line. Visualizing this section of the battlefield he realized just how fortunate Marcus Antonius Primus had been. With a little more luck the Vitellian flank attack would have found the gap between the Thirteenth and the Seventh and carried on to rampage in his rear. It seemed clear that in the dark the attackers had no idea just how narrow a front the Thirteenth defended. When they struck the Seventh Galbiana they’d probably thought they were fighting Aquila’s legion. It all proved how chaotic a battlefield was in the night.

Serpentius intended to take full opportunity of that chaos. The enemy commander’s first probes would have convinced him Primus intended to defend the road in depth and he’d have to alter his tactics accordingly. The Spaniard recalled First Adiutrix’s dispositions at Bedriacum. Four cohorts in the front line, followed by two banks of three cohorts: a formation three hundred and fifty paces deep. So a narrower front might mean a further hundred or hundred and fifty paces. Valerius had reckoned the catapult’s maximum range at seven hundred paces, which put its likely position, at most, a third of a mile behind the enemy front line. Did that mean it could be sited among the three reserve cohorts in the rear? The possibility triggered a mental shrug. If it did he would just have to meet that obstacle when he reached it.

‘Ajax.’

Serpentius felt his companions freeze at the authoritative voice from the darkness. ‘Agamemnon,’ he replied with equal arrogance. ‘Headquarters section carrying our injured tribune back to the medicus.’

He heard a disapproving sniff. ‘The legate won’t be too happy with that. First win the battle then deal with the wounded, that was the order. Even officers.’

‘Well this tribune is connected.’ The Spaniard kept his head low. He could just make out the mounted shadows away to their left. He prayed it wasn’t some officious legionary officer who’d turn them round. ‘Very well connected, if you see what I mean. But we might be a bit off course?’

A long hesitation while the other man pondered his decision. Serpentius envisaged an unseen shrug of the shoulders. ‘Not just a bit,’ the voice resumed, ‘but that’s hardly surprising in this shithole. It’s hard to know who you’re supposed to be fighting. Keep going and you’ll find the road. Follow it back and the Fifth’s medicus has set up just beyond the big rock thrower.’

Serpentius muttered his thanks. ‘Move, you bastards, or he’ll be bled white by the time we get there.’

He led the militia men in a diagonal across the horsemen’s front, then stopped for a moment to listen, moving only when he heard the thud of hooves fading into the distance. For a time they marched through a steady stream of wounded, walking, staggering or crawling back from the fighting line. Many were badly hacked about and one or two pleaded pitifully for aid or water, but Serpentius maintained the steady pace of a soldier with an important task on his hands. When they reached the road he abandoned his shield and axe and told the men to crouch down in the ditch where they wouldn’t be seen. The road sat perhaps seven or eight feet above the ditch. ‘If anybody challenges you, you’re just back from the front line waiting for orders and the return of your tribune.’ Without another word he was gone, leaving Celer and his men sitting nervously in the darkness.

Night was Serpentius’s element and he crept along the muddy bottom of the ditch as silently as the reptile he was named for. Missile launches had punctuated the trek across the darkened fields, but had become so commonplace as to go almost unnoticed. Now, as the rocks passed directly overhead, he was reminded again of their terrifying power. At regular intervals he heard the sound of iron-soled boots crunching on the road above as reinforcements were fed into the slaughterhouse of the front line.

The former gladiator felt no compassion for these men who might be marching to their deaths. Rome had taken his family and his soul; all that was left was emptiness. Romans had cheered as he was forced to kill friends in the arena. They were a people without pity; they deserved none. Let them kill each other as long as they had the strength. It must be twenty years since they’d burned his village and taken him for a slave in retaliation for the tribe’s raids on Roman gold trains. His wife and baby son had burned together in their hut. The boy would have been full grown now, and on lonely nights the Spaniard tortured himself imagining the man he might have become.

The only Roman he could call friend was the one-handed soldier who saved him from certain death in the arena. Valerius had given him his freedom — he wore the little bronze manumission plaque in a leather bag at his throat — but he would not walk away until the debt was paid. A glow in the darkness brought him to a halt. Of course, they would need light to work the machine and to load it. The lamps must be masked in some way to ensure their glow couldn’t be seen from much more than a hundred paces. He slithered closer, more careful even than before. When he could hear voices he climbed to the top of the bank and risked a glance, ducking back as the great catapult sent another missile through the air above his head.

The incredible power of the machine was evident in the way it leapt against its restraints like a living thing. He took advantage of the empty road to have another look. The catapult took up most of the roadway. Serpentius knew it would be pegged down with metal pins reaching deep into the ground. As he watched, the crew threw themselves at wheels and levers on either side of the machine. The throwing arm moved slowly backwards, drawn by two ropes almost four inches thick. He tried to identify other important elements of the huge weapon, but it seemed to him that the ropes and the levers were the most vulnerable. The Spaniard chewed his lip as his mind turned to the thickness of the ropes and the axes they’d brought. Twelve men working the machine that he could see: eight whose job it was to reset the beast’s arm and then load the reinforced leather sling that held the missile, two to check and reseat the pegs after every launch, and two whose only task was to watch the proceedings. Four guards, one to each corner of the structure, but where there were four there would undoubtedly be more, probably resting in one of the tents he could see nearby.

A half-cohort of legionaries appeared behind the machine and one of the watching men directed them into the ditch on the far side of the road. Serpentius squirmed backwards to the mud-slick base, but he didn’t return immediately to Celer and his men. Instead, he waited patiently, counting the seconds as he’d done with every passing unit. There seemed to be a set pattern that amounted to a count of about three hundred between each detachment. It would have to do.

‘The odds are about even, but we have the advantage of surprise.’ Cluvius Celer had been listening intently for the Spaniard’s return and almost had a seizure when the voice whispered in his ear. He hadn’t heard even the flutter of a moth until the man spoke. Serpentius had been away so long the militia commander had begun to despair and the cold had seeped into his bones, stiffening his limbs. Now, with the prospect of action, he felt instantly invigorated.

‘Cover your shield fronts and your faces with mud.’ The Spaniard picked up his axe. ‘Now is the time to vanish, only to reappear like ravening wolves, but silent wolves, because everything depends on surprise.’ The men gathered round in the darkness and he raised his voice slightly, deliberately downplaying the risks. ‘The crew are intent on their duties; you will be on them before they know it. The guards and the two supervisors must be dealt with simultaneously. I will take the two on the far side of the road. Prefect, you and Crispinus must deal with the two on this side. Lucco, Julius? You have the watchers. Timing is everything. We strike the moment the machine is fired. While we are killing the guards the others will slaughter the workers. No pity and no mercy. A moment’s hesitation and we are all dead, got that?’ He sensed the nods in the darkness. ‘When it’s done, four men to destroy the machine’s vital parts.’ He explained about the ropes and levers. ‘Twelve to form a perimeter and four at the tent to deal with any reaction. We do the job and then we disappear.’

A murmur of assent, but Celer’s voice came from close to his ear. ‘Two guards in the same second? How is that possible? At least allow me to …’ His words trailed away as Serpentius turned and their eyes met from a distance of less than a handspan. Cluvius Celer would remember that look for the rest of his life.

The Spaniard led them to within a hundred paces of the lights. Celer touched his shoulder as he counted the seconds to the next formation. ‘May Fortuna be with you,’ he whispered. Normally Serpentius would have snorted his disdain at the possibility that he required luck to keep him alive, but something in Celer’s voice stopped him and he nodded. I must be getting soft, he thought. When the unit was past and only a blur in the darkness, Serpentius sprinted across the road and slipped into the far ditch.

As he slithered towards the catapult, uncharacteristic doubts began to assail him. Could they do it? They seemed steady enough, but they were old and slow. In other circumstances he would have laughed. Old? Some of them might be younger than him. No, Romans they might be, but they had proved their worth and he had to trust them. Just as he must trust that the workmen and guards were arranged exactly as he’d left them and that the units marched that vital count of three hundred apart. Fifty to allow the formation to pass out of sight. Twenty of silent killing. A hundred and eighty to do what they’d come to do. That gave them fifty to escape into the darkness before the next formation arrived. A strong man with an axe and an appetite for destruction could do a great deal of damage in a count of two hundred. Serpentius banked on the sound of the axes being similar to the sound of the pegs being hammered into place. He’d leave the oil lamps lit, because to extinguish them might alert someone to a change of circumstances. Just outside the circle of light thrown by the lamps he left the ditch for the empty field to his right. And waited.

By now his mind automatically recorded the passing of the units and the interval between. When he had reached two hundred and eighty a new group appeared to be ushered into the ditch. He watched the men clamber down, bypass the big catapult and then climb back to the road, grumbling as they went. When they were gone he slipped back into the mud and crept along until he reached the shadows below the closer of the two guards. He laid the axe aside. Would the others be in position yet? The huge boulder must be in its sling by now. He heard the arm whip forward with an enormous whuuuppp of released energy and the machine bucked as the oak beam slammed into the straw-filled sacks. Curiously, so close to the weapon there was no characteristic rush of disturbed air. But he had no time to think about that.

A suspicion of movement in the ditch alerted the furthermost of the guards to potential danger. His racing mind registered a whirling circle of light, but before his brain could turn instinct into reaction the little Scythian axe Serpentius had thrown was already embedded in his throat. As the nearer guard turned at the soft thunk of the axe striking its target, Serpentius whipped the feet from under him. Too surprised even to call out, the guard died silently as the Spaniard’s knife sliced through his windpipe and the big arteries on either side. Serpentius ignored the blood on his clothing and hands, picked up the axe and scrambled up the bank. He was conscious of a disturbance on the far side of the road. With satisfaction he heard the sound of bodies falling and the little grunts and mews of agony that were the noise of a man being killed quietly by an expert. No time for congratulation. Some instinct told him they were already a count of twenty behind schedule. In the lamplight he saw Celer ushering his men into a defensive perimeter and four making their way silently towards the tents.

‘Forget the levers,’ he hissed to the three men climbing on to the machine. ‘Two men to a rope. Crispinus? With me. Lucco and Julius, you take the other.’ The throwing arm was still in position against the padded buffer from the last shot. Two ropes of plaited leather ran taut to a wooden roller between a pair of ingenious wheels that somehow contrived to haul the arm back and hold it in place until its own tension could be released. Serpentius stood over the point where rope met roller and brought his axe down in a measured arc, allowing the power to flow through the handle to the honed edge. ‘Merda!’ He heard Lucco’s curse even as his own axe bounced off the plaited leather, barely marking it. Crispinus looked at him in consternation. ‘Chop, you bastard,’ he snarled. ‘Did you think it was going to be easy?’

They swung like demons, cursing and muttering, but no amount of curses would more than fray the edges of the rope. A few feet away Lucco and Julius were making even less progress. Serpentius looked round desperately for an easier target. ‘Smash the levers and wheels,’ he hissed. ‘Anything that looks important.’ A soft breeze tickled the bristle on his cheek and a flicker caught his eye. Fool, he thought. Valerius would have seen it at once. He threw the axe aside and ran to a pole holding one of the eight or nine oil lamps illuminating the machine. Without thinking he reached up, cursing as his fingers touched the ceramic lamp and the tips were instantly turned into balls of agony by the heat.

‘Here.’ Celer held out a bloodstained cloak torn from one of the bodies scattered around the machine. Serpentius wrapped his hands in the thick woollen cloth and unhooked the lamp from the pole. He dashed back to the catapult and poured half the burning oil over the wooden roller and leather rope then smashed the pot into the pit below so the flames leapt up and singed his eyebrows. Crispinus stepped back with a cry of fear, but quickly overcame it to resume his attack on the rope. Serpentius recovered his axe and joined him, only to pause as Celer appeared at his side, another smoking lamp in his hand. ‘Wait,’ the Spaniard said. ‘Better to spread the damage.’

Bewilderment replaced the wild look in the militia prefect’s eyes.

‘The arm.’ Serpentius pointed to a reinforced block in the centre of the catapult. ‘The base of the throwing arm is where the greatest stress must be. Weaken that and the generals can whistle for their rocks. Use splinters from the damaged parts to kindle the fire. Quickly now. We don’t have much time.’

His words were prophetic. At last the sound of axe on wood brought the bleary-eyed remnant of the guard charging half-dressed from their tent, only to be cut down by Celer’s militia veterans. One, barely a boy but agile as a cat, evaded the searching blades and darted back into the tent. A heartbeat later Serpentius cringed at the strident cry of a cornu.

‘Will somebody kill that bastard,’ the Spaniard raged.

Two of Celer’s militia charged inside the leather tent and the trumpet call was cut off in mid-note, but already cries of alarm echoed through the night. Celer called a warning as men began to stream out of the darkness towards the catapult.

‘Hold them,’ Serpentius shouted. ‘We have to let the fire weaken the throwing arm.’ Someone had thrown another lamp at the base of the oak beam. Flames licked up the roughly planed surface, but the Spaniard knew the damage would still only be superficial. Celer had to buy them time, and the tortured shriek of a man dying with a sword in his belly told him the prefect knew his duty. He concentrated on the blackened surface of the leather rope, alternating blows with bull-shouldered Crispinus and ignoring the flames that licked at his face and arms. They were making an impression now. More than an impression. The leather strands began to fray and come apart. With one final blow the rope snapped, the end whipping up to smash into Serpentius’s face and knock him off his feet. Spitting blood he clawed himself upright and turned towards the second rope, but one glance told him they didn’t have time. By now the perimeter was hard pressed, with shadowy figures struggling in the flickering light of the flames. He saw that two of Celer’s men were already down. The time for thought was past.

Roaring the ancient war cry of his tribe the former gladiator leapt from the catapult, whirling the axe. A man sprinted towards him with a bucket in his hand and no regard for his own safety. Serpentius repaid his bravery by sinking the axe head in his belly. As his victim shuddered with the awful effects of the blow the Spaniard hauled at the weapon and cursed as he realized it was beyond recovery. Danger was everywhere. Someone ran past screaming but Serpentius never discovered whether he was friend or foe. The respite gave him time to draw his long sword and he turned to face the next attack. It was a heavy weapon, designed for mounted troops, with a lethal double edge that cavalrymen used to bludgeon their enemies into oblivion. On foot, few men had the skill to use it effectively. Serpentius was one. The former gladiator who had survived a hundred fights. Master of his trade, and a born killer.

As he fought, he screamed his defiance and contempt for the cowards who faced him. But another part of his mind knew time was running out. So far the opposition had been piecemeal, disorganized; a few men at a time rushing out of the darkness. Suddenly, above the cries of the maimed and the dying, came the familiar sound of iron-shod feet, and they were coming at the run.

A hand touched his shoulder and he dispatched another man and turned with a snarl.

‘You must get him away,’ Crispinus shouted. ‘The prefect. You must get him away.’

Serpentius looked from the hunched figure of Clovius Celer to the darkened road where perhaps three or four hundred men were advancing at the trot.

‘We will buy you time,’ the militia man assured him. The mud- and soot-stained face shone with pride. ‘Your job is done. Save the prefect.’ Beyond Crispinus, Lucca nodded, and Serpentius saw the resolve mirrored in the eyes of the dozen survivors of Celer’s band of veterans. Emotion was unfamiliar to Serpentius of Avala, unless that emotion was hatred, but for a moment he found his vision clouded.

‘I will take him, but hear me: you will be remembered. Wherever soldiers gather they will talk of the deeds of the Ateste cohort of the evocati.’ With a last nod he shouldered Celer to his feet and half carried, half dragged him away into the relative sanctuary of the darkness.

When he was a hundred paces from the road, he lowered the prefect to the ground and felt the man’s body shudder as waves of pain racked him. With practised fingers Serpentius checked for the rent in the chain armour. He grimaced at what he found. A stomach wound, and the familiar stink told him the bowels had been torn. A death wound. He reached for the knife at his belt. Better to …

‘You must leave me,’ Celer groaned. ‘No point in us both dying. Leave me and get back to Valerius where you belong.’

The Spaniard slipped the knife back into its leather sheath. ‘I said I’d stay with you.’

‘Pah.’ It was almost a laugh. ‘What good …’

Serpentius placed a hand over the old man’s mouth. On the causeway the last of Clovius Celer’s men were dead or dying. The Vitellians would be spreading out from the road looking for anyone who had escaped the massacre. He could hear the sound of men shouting encouragement to each other in the darkness.

Celer stifled a cry as Serpentius heaved him on to his back and stumbled further away from the road. After a moment, the Spaniard paused, and coming to a decision turned west, deeper into enemy territory. When he judged they were safe, he sat with the militia commander and listened to his spirit fade. At first Celer was lucid, talking of his farm on the plain outside Ateste, the son he’d raised and the rich dark earth and vines that grew as if at his command. But gradually his mind returned him to the rocky highlands of Armenia and the days when he had followed a general he had revered as a god.

‘He should have been Emperor, you know.’

Serpentius blinked, because for the first time in an hour the voice sounded rational, but they were the last words Clovius Celer uttered. As the first faint pink glow that heralded dawn appeared in the eastern sky Serpentius sensed he was alone. He sat for a while considering his options, most of which seemed to end up lying in a cold grave. Eventually, he nodded to himself. One chance. Another hour and he would be trapped in the midst of his enemies in broad daylight. He cut a diagonal that would take him beyond any searchers and followed the causeway west until he saw lights and his nose told him he was close. Keeping to the darkness he reached his goal at last. When he was certain he was alone, he stripped off armour, sword belt and tunic …