Iron and Rust

CHAPTER 14

The Far North

The Harzhorn Mountains,

Four Days before the Ides of July, AD235

Caius Petronius Magnus rose from the swamp, blood-bedraggled. His eyes bulged, his hands beckoned. Timesitheus went to move back. The mud sucked at his boots. He put up his hands to push back the dead Senator.

Another bad dream. Timesitheus opened his eyes. By the light of the single lamp, he saw the low ridge pole, his travelling chest and his armour on a stand, a folding stool. Outside the tent he heard a horse whicker, men talking and moving: the sounds of the camp stirring.

Just a bad dream. No daemon: they did not exist. Not a message from the gods: they did not exist either. And not guilt, definitely not guilt. He had tested Magnus and the others. If they had been loyal, they would not have been so ready to conspire, would not have had the forger make coin-dies with a portrait of Magnus as Emperor. If they had been loyal, they would have denounced him, and they would have been rewarded. Tranquillina was right. If he had not exposed their latent treachery, another would have done. They had possessed ambition without intelligence. They deserved their fate.

Timesitheus yawned. His eyes were watering. He rubbed them with the back of his hand. At least neither that fat fool Venacus nor the mincing Catilius Severus had yet taken to haunting his sleep. No wonder he had bad dreams. He was exhausted in mind and body, and now everyone in the army had good reason to be afraid.

The campaign had started well enough. They had crossed the Rhine, paraded under the ancient Arch of Germanicus on the far bank and trudged off into the vast forests of the North. The Germans had melted away before them. The native settlements were deserted. Maximinus had let the soldiers loot what little they contained and then ordered them burnt. From time to time, they captured untended herds. These too the Emperor handed to the soldiers. The few barbarians they took — the slow and unlucky — were also given to the soldiery.

After some days things began to change. The campfires they came across were still warm, some smouldering. Strange figures were half glimpsed through the trees. First stragglers, then scouts began to disappear. The initial attacks fell on parties out foraging. They were beaten off easily enough, but each left a few men dead or wounded. Together, they added to the rising apprehension.

Finally, they emerged from the mountains on to a broad plain. Several days further march and the hostile tribes — the Alamanni, Cherusci and Angrivarii — offered battle. They were drawn up in front of a marsh. No sooner had the legions closed than the Germans fled into the swamp. Disregarding all caution, Maximinus had pursued them, spurring his mount into the morass. The water had risen above its belly. The Emperor was mired. Tribesmen swarmed all around him. Only the courage and prompt action of the men of 2nd Legion Parthica had saved him.

It had been a victory of a sort. Laurelled dispatches had been sent back to Rome. Great paintings of the success were to be set up in front of the Senate House. The gods alone knew if the messengers had reached the frontier. After the battle, embassies from the barbarians had come to the camp. Those from the friendly tribes of the far North had been led by Froda the Angle, the son of King Isangrim, who ruled the shores of the Suebian Sea. When the barbarian prince departed, weighed down with gold, he had left one thousand warriors to serve with the army for the next two years. Deputations had also come from the Alamanni and their allies. They asked for peace. Timesitheus had not been alone in doubting their sincerity. Maximinus had demanded hostages. They had been promised, but never arrived.

The dead were buried, a victory monument erected, and the army turned south for home. They had not gone five miles before the attacks began again The Germans had driven in the pickets. For some desperate moments it had seemed they would cut the long column in two. Again, Maximinus had fought hand to hand. This time it could not be denied that his prowess and his example had turned the tide. The next day they had resumed the march in a square, the baggage in the middle. It had slowed their progress and brought only a certain amount of security. Continuously, bands of warriors rushed from thickets, hurled javelins and retreated. Those ill-disciplined enough to give chase were surrounded. Few made it back to the army. Obstacles — felled trees and diverted streams — further hindered the army. Timesitheus had thought of the story in Thucydides of the Athenians harassed in the wilds of Aetolia. It had not ended well for them. All order lost, they had been chased into dried-up watercourses and trackless woods and hunted down. The talk around the campfires was of Varus and his lost legions.

Fighting almost every step of the way, the expedition had crawled south. The ambushes increased in intensity. The warriors made the horses and mules their particular targets. The army left a trail of abandoned material, rich pickings for their tormentors. Any who had thought the mountains would bring relief had been sadly disillusioned.

The pass was about three hundred paces wide. A ditch and rampart had been dug across. Behind, waited innumerable Germans. On either side were steep slopes. More barbarians were stationed at the crests. There was no way around. The army had encamped. Now supplies were running short. If the military council this morning did not produce an answer, they may as well all resign themselves to death.

Timesitheus called for his slave, swung his legs off the camp bed. He did not want to die. He thought of Tranquillina, and he thought of their daughter. She would be eight in the autumn. What would life hold for the child without him? What would Tranquillina do? The thought brought him no comfort. Tranquillina would marry again. Some other man would enjoy the pleasures of her bed, would be inspired by the goad of her ambition.

The boy brought in a chamber pot and a bowl of clean water. Timesitheus told him to bring food.

Groaning slightly, Timesitheus got up. He pissed in the pot, then washed his hands and face in cold water. What was he doing here? Back in Mogontiacum, the day after the conspirators had been arrested, Maximinus had summoned him. Never effusive, the Emperor had praised him briefly. His loyalty would be rewarded. As he had petitioned, his cousin Sabinus Modestus could have command of the cataphracts. For him, there was a more difficult task. There was trouble in Bithynia-Pontus: the finances of its cities were in disarray, the province overrun by Christians. The senatorial governor was not up to the task. With a special commission, Timesitheus would end these problems. But not yet. Maximinus was not ready to part with his little Greek. Who but his Graeculus could keep the army supplied? The atheists and the corrupt councillors of Bithynia-Pontus could wait. So Timesitheus had found himself in charge of the baggage train, weighed under with work, shouting himself hoarse. Needless to say, the carts, which he had been unable to proscribe, had caused the worst problems: forever shedding wheels, breaking axles, getting bogged down. He had found a grim satisfaction in every one they had left broken in their wake.

The boy brought in some biscuit and cold bacon. Timesitheus ate it as he was helped into his equipment. Here he was, hundreds of miles of gloomy forest from safety, a victim of his own efficiency. Gods below, he did not want to die. He told himself to be a man. He was just tired. It had been hard to get any sleep with the low-lying valley and the surrounding woods echoing with the sounds of barbarian exultations. Once again he looked into the flat, black eyes of his fear and forced the rodent to scrabble back into some dark recess.

It was near dawn. A breeze was stirring the black trees. The low fires smoked with damp wood as Timesitheus walked through the encampment. There were high clouds, but it might not rain.

Maximinus could not stand any ostentation. The imperial pavilion was much smaller than in Alexander’s day, although still huge. Officers were waiting outside in the gloom. They stood in small groups or on their own. Few were talking. Sanctus, the ab Admissionibus, blocked the door.

‘Health and great joy.’ Timesitheus greeted Macedo in their native language. The Greek commander was standing on his own.

‘Health and great joy.’ Macedo’s tone belied his words.

‘Is the Emperor awake?’

‘Yes.’

‘Has anyone been admitted?’

‘The triumvirate.’ Since they had put the Thracian on the throne, the three Senators Vopiscus, Honoratus and Catius Clemens were seldom apart, and almost always close to their Emperor. Their collective nickname was fitting. ‘And the favoured equestrians.’ There was no need to name them.

‘Anullinus is Praetorian Prefect, and Volo the head of his frumentarii.’ Timesitheus lowered his voice. ‘But in Mogontiacum it was we who saved Maximinus as certainly as Julius Capitolinus’ 2nd Legion in that swamp. And Domitius has done nothing.’

Macedo grunted.

‘Yet they are in there, and we are out here.’

‘You will get your reward in Bithynia-Pontus.’ Macedo did not try to hide his bitterness. ‘And I will get nothing.’

Timesitheus smiled. ‘If we live through this, I will get my reward.’

Macedo glowered. ‘If we live through this, I will get nothing.’

The courtly voice of the ab Admissionibus announced that His Sacred Majesty would see his loyal officers.

Maximinus sat on the ivory throne. On his right was the triumvirate, on his left the four equestrians. Behind him stood his son Maximus and another youth, some second cousin from the Thracian hill country called Rutilus. The other figure, towards the rear of the room, was far more disconcerting. Everyone knew that Ababa, the druid woman, had travelled with the expedition. It was rumoured she went to Maximinus in the dead of the night, to satisfy his lusts or to practise unholy sacrifices, perhaps to do both. Yet so far she had never appeared in public with the Emperor.

Timesitheus studied Ababa. Neither old, nor young, she was very tall, her face not unattractive, unmarked by the torture she had suffered in the previous reign, her figure hidden by her cloak. Having a woman at a council of war was always a mistake. Cleopatra had done Antony no good. Having a northern barbarian woman, one tainted with proximity to alien gods, would disturb all the high command. Worse, this was the German bitch that had prophesied the death of Alexander.

Almost every decision Maximinus had made in his short reign had been bad. Before they left Mogontiacum, buoyed up by the influx of wealth from the crown gold offered on his accession and the confiscated estates of those condemned with Magnus, Maximinus had decreed that the pay of all soldiers would be doubled. The triumvirate had been unable to dissuade him. Once announced, there could be no going back. The thing was irrevocable — and completely unsustainable.

‘Fellow-soldiers.’ Maximinus got to his feet. His bulk dominated the room. ‘By their treachery the Germans believe they have put us in a bad position. They are wrong. Since we set out, we have sought battle, and they have avoided it. Now they have delivered themselves into our hands.’ The grey eyes of Maximinus shone in his great white face. ‘They have the short-lived ferocity of beasts. We have courage and discipline. They have blind savagery. We have torsion artillery, and we have a plan.’

Despite his misgivings, the harsh, grating voice lifted Timesitheus. Led by a Titan like this, an elemental force from a bygone age, a new Prometheus, who or what could stand against them? They could storm the heavens.