Sword of Rome

XXXVII

The men shivered around the meagre campfire Valerius had allowed in the damp gully that was their refuge. Refuge, not camp. A place to hide from enemies who by now would be sharpening their blades in anticipation of a painful and hideous revenge for the deaths of their comrades.

A dark shape appeared from the shadows and seven hands dropped to their swords in alarm.

‘Like a cork in a wineskin.’ Serpentius shook the rain from his cloak. ‘A camp or a patrol guarding every road and no way past that I could find.’

Valerius cursed under his breath. Things had gone so well for the first three days after they’d left Valentia. They had followed the trail of Valens’ army through the mountains from marching camp to marching camp, staying just far enough back to avoid his rearguard. But on the fourth day they found themselves almost colliding with his baggage train and Valerius had been forced to waste precious hours in hiding, waiting for the invasion force to reach open country where there would be ample space to bypass them. But it seemed Valens was in no hurry to reach the plains, because he had halted his army in the mountains west of Augusta Taurinorum, where the hills opened out on to the flatlands of northern Italia.

‘Why is he holding back?’ Valerius directed the question at Serpentius and Metto, but he knew there were a hundred possible answers. Perhaps some kind of negotiation had begun between Otho and Vitellius and they’d agreed to halt their forces until it was complete. Maybe, somewhere beyond the hills, Otho had put together an army that had bottled Valens up in the passes. Or Caecina could be stuck in the Alps and his rival was wary of taking on Otho’s forces alone. He felt the eyes of the others on him and knew the reason didn’t matter. What mattered was that they were looking for a decision from their leader because they knew that Claudius Victor and his skinning knife were somewhere close. Very well. ‘There is no other option. We have to go back.’ He heard a sharp intake of breath and sensed the men’s dismay at the prospect of retracing their steps through the narrow, steep-sided valleys where they might meet Victor’s Batavians round every corner. ‘We’ll find a way south and another route home.’

‘That could take weeks.’ The challenge came from Fuscus, one of the legionaries. It had to be Fuscus, who had moaned and whined all the way from Moguntiacum. Fuscus who couldn’t keep his mouth shut. ‘Maybe we should split up and try to get through in pairs?’

‘In Batavian breeches and cloaks?’ The gully rang with a sharp crack as Metto slapped his comrade on the back of the head. ‘Without a pass or today’s watchword? We wouldn’t last beyond the second hour. And then it would be the axe or the fire, maybe even the cross for traitors like us.’ The other legionaries growled at the hated word, but Metto was unrepentant. ‘Aye, curse you may, but that’s what we are as far as those men out there are concerned. Traitors deserving of a traitor’s death.’

‘Maybe we should turn ourselves in,’ Fuscus persisted, rising to his feet. He pointed at Valerius. ‘If we handed him over we might even get a reward. They’d pay well for one of Otho’s spies …’ His voice tailed off with a curious hissing sound like an angry snake. Or a man who’d just had a long knife pushed very deliberately between his ribs and into his heart.

Serpentius pulled the blade free and allowed the legionary’s body to drop to the earth. ‘Only one step from saying it to doing it,’ the Spaniard said cheerfully, wiping the blade on Fuscus’s cloak. ‘Anyone else have any ideas they’d like to share?’

Valerius had been as surprised as any of them by Serpentius’s swift response to Fuscus’s revolt, but he dared not show it. With barely a glance at the dead man, he met the remaining legionaries’ eyes one by one. When he reached Metto, the centurion gave him an almost imperceptible nod that confirmed he still had them. He’d been fortunate that Fuscus was a fool, and a fool who had made himself unpopular at that. If it had been one of the others, the outcome might have been different.

They doused the fire and readied themselves in the darkness. Valerius knew they had to get as far from Valens’ army as they could before daylight, but there was another, greater danger to be considered. Claudius Victor was out there somewhere and he would know he had his prey in a trap. They travelled through the hills in single file with every man thanking the gods for the lack of a moon and the pitch black night that hid them from their enemies. Serpentius was mountain born and mountain bred, and he could move in the dark as easily as in the day. With barely a pause, he took them westwards where he had identified a valley that led south and would, in time, hopefully bring them to the plain and Italia. Despite the Spaniard’s lead, the men were wary and progress was necessarily slow. Valerius hid his frustration. He knew every moment of delay put his mission at greater risk and might cost thousands of lives. Otho would be aware of his enemy’s dispositions by now, but Valerius had learned much that could mean the difference between victory and defeat.

When they reached the valley mouth, Serpentius halted the little column and made his way back to where Valerius waited. ‘Something doesn’t smell right.’

‘Take Metto.’ But his words were wasted. Serpentius was already gone.

They waited for what seemed like an eternity, the horses moving restlessly, but cavalry-trained to stay silent. Valerius strained his ears until they hurt and his eyes searched the darkness until every variation of shade seemed to move and threaten. Eventually, he could take no more and lifted his heels to push his horse into motion. ‘Only one.’ The whisper almost stopped his heart as Serpentius threw a wolfskin cloak across his saddle. The Roman shivered. Mars’ arse, he must be getting old. He hadn’t had the slightest notion of the former gladiator’s return until the weight of the cloak fell on his knees.

They were three more days in the mountains, eking out their rations and watering their horses in the streams that cut every valley. Serpentius had buried the Batavian whose wolfskin cloak now acted as Valerius’s saddle cloth, but they knew the fact that the man was missing would be as good as a signpost to Claudius Victor. Valerius could almost feel the Batavian’s warm breath on his neck.

Every man felt a surge of relief when they eventually emerged from the claustrophobic embrace of the hills at a tiny settlement beside a small stream the inhabitants laughably claimed was the Padus. The villagers had fled at the first sight of wolfskin cloaks and gleaming iron, but when the strangers made no threatening moves and didn’t loot the houses the bravest gradually returned. They called their village Forovibiensis and spoke a guttural Latin that Valerius at first struggled to understand. Still, he managed to trade the dead man’s cloak for three loaves of hard country bread and a skin of some earthy drink that might once have been wine. Gossip was as important to these rustic people as trade goods and they listened with dismay as Valerius told them of the great army gathering to their north. One of the elders nodded seriously. Apart from Valerius’s men, he said, they had encountered no soldiers, but this information accorded with what their watchers could see from the mountain behind the village. Columns of smoke where no smoke should be seen, thick and dark, towering in the still air over the plain like ominous statues.

‘Valens may be too scared to leave the mountains,’ Serpentius offered, ‘but he’s sending out raiding parties to try to goad Otho’s forces into attacking him. Fire and iron in the night and a few slaughtered civilians, and soon every town and village in the province is screaming for protection. With a little of lady Fortuna’s luck, Otho’s army could be within a day’s march.’

Valerius wasn’t so certain. There was nothing wrong with the Spaniard’s logic, but he knew Otho had been relying on the Balkan legions to stop Vitellius and those legions would take time to react. At best, a legion on the march would make twenty miles a day. He tried to remember how many days it had been since they had left Rome, but could only guess. It was possible, but nowhere near certain, that they could be somewhere close to Italia by now.

‘What lies that way?’ He pointed to the east. The elder shook his head and explained he had never ventured further than the next river. After a moment’s thought, he called over a small fat man who peered suspiciously from the doorway of one of the mud and wattle houses.

‘Cabour sometimes trades as far as Genua,’ he said proudly.

Valerius repeated his question and the trader’s brow furrowed. ‘When you come to Pollentia, follow the river upstream until you can cross the bridge at Alba Pompeia. There you will find a track that takes you to Aquae Statiellae, where you can join the Julia Augusta. It is a fine road,’ he said proudly. ‘Two full carts can pass side by side. Turn south and you will eventually reach Vada Sabatia and the great sea. Go north and the next town is Dertona, but I have never been there.’ He shrugged as if the place was of little consequence, but the name stirred a memory in Valerius.

‘These columns of smoke, could one of them have come from Dertona?’

Serpentius glanced up sharply at the new urgency in his friend’s voice, but Cabour only looked mystified. ‘Smoke is smoke. You see it in the sky, something is burning. Who knows where?’

Valerius shook his head in frustration. ‘Saddle up,’ he shouted, and saw the startled looks from his exhausted men.

When they were on the move, Serpentius rode up to him. ‘What’s so interesting about this Dertona?’ The flat plain stretched out ahead of them under an endless blue sky, a patchwork of fields cut with drainage ditches and streams and scattered with workers preparing the land for planting. Despite the relative warmth of the day, Valerius suppressed a shiver as he kept his eyes on the distant horizon.

‘Domitia.’

The villa sprawled across a low hill overlooking the town and Domitia Longina Corbulo had a clear view from the balcony over the plain. It was already pitch dark and silk-winged moths the size of gold aurei fluttered round the oil lamp, occasionally popping in a hissing splutter of bright flame when they came too close. A similar phenomenon was occurring in front of her eyes. Tiny pinpricks of red and gold dotted the distant blackness, first flaring, then fading quite quickly to a duller glow. With every new conflagration, a claw of cold iron gripped her heart.

What was she to do?

She had come north to evade the attentions of Flavius Domitianus and the growing unrest in Rome, but there was something else too. She had needed to get away to try to come to terms with her feelings for Gaius Valerius Verrens. She was a married woman — true, in name only — yet each time he appeared in her life she remembered the terrible shipwreck and the sun-baked beach in Egypt where it had all begun. The desperate struggle for survival against heat and thirst. The stern, masterful figure who had fought for her life and her honour, and, finally, her love. A man unlike any other she had ever known. She shivered, not entirely due to the chill night air. She was sure Valerius suffered similar feelings, because she had seen it in the soulful eyes that sat so uneasily in a face that was as hard and unyielding as the man who bore it. When news came that Galba was dead and Otho had taken the purple, her first instinct had been to return to him. But her uncle, head of Dertona’s ordo, the council of a hundred prominent citizens who controlled all civic life in the city, had persuaded her it was too dangerous to travel.

And now it was too late.

Hard on the heels of Otho’s elevation had come word that the governor of Germania, Aulus Vitellius, had been hailed Emperor in his turn, and that his legions were marching on Rome. Troops of hard-eyed auxiliary cavalry had appeared at every town along the Padus valley demanding that each ordo in turn pledge allegiance to Vitellius. Her uncle, dear, proud old Prixus, had closed the gates on them and a show of force on the walls had been enough to see them off. For now. Prixus argued in council that only the Senate and people of Rome had the right to hail an Emperor, and that Vitellius was a provincial upstart of the worst sort. The townsfolk had heard him out and agreed that a message should be sent to Rome assuring Otho of Dertona’s allegiance and asking for troops to be sent to safeguard the city against possible attack.

Since then they had heard nothing.

She flinched as another bright flare briefly pierced the night. A villa, just like this? A farm? Was it closer than the last? So far the German auxiliaries had kept their depredations to the far side of the river, but she knew that could change at any time. A stream of refugees carrying the blackened remnants of their lives had confirmed the cavalrymen were part of a mighty army and that they were becoming bolder by the day. Earlier she had seen a great column of smoke to the north-west that could be no single building. Her uncle had stood beside her with tears in his eyes and said a single word. ‘Cuttiae.’

Cuttiae was — had been — a small community less than ten miles away, on the north side of the river. Its people had stayed firm for Otho. Prixus sighed and Domitia tried not to notice as he wiped his eyes. ‘I think that tomorrow we must move into the city.’

He was telling her it was only a matter of time before they came.