Sword of Rome

XLV

Marcus Salvius Otho Augustus delayed his departure long enough to make a rousing speech which extolled honour, duty and courage and his right to rule as directed by the Senate and people of Rome. It was a fine speech, with Otho at his charming, persuasive best, and its message was that they could not lose. The legions cheered him to the heavens.

But later, as they watched the Emperor ride away with an escort of six cohorts of elite Praetorian Guards, Valerius felt the mood change. There were no cries or protests, but he could see the looks of puzzlement and disappointment in the faces of Juva and the First Adiutrix, and Marcus and his gladiators. For the first time he realized the true magnitude of Otho’s misjudgement.

‘They think he’s deserting them,’ Serpentius voiced the unspoken thought.

Celsus had claimed no Emperor since Augustus had fought beside his legions. But those legions had not been fighting a civil war, they had been fighting for the expansion of the Empire against barbarians. In the coming days, Otho’s legions would meet fellow Roman citizens in battle, and would be fighting not for the Empire, but for a man. Now that man was riding to safety, leaving them to serve under leaders in whom they had little or no trust, and, worse, he was taking with him three thousand men who should have been fighting at their side.

Valerius was reminded of that moment during a conference of senior officers two days later beside the Via Postumia. They had covered barely twelve miles on the first day, delayed by confusion in the baggage train. Today they had marched until the sixth hour across the flat, featureless landscape on a raised causeway barely wide enough to take eight men, bounded by ditches that would hamper the legions’ ability to deploy into battle order. Paulinus wanted to leave the road and make camp for the night, arguing there was no point in going any further before nightfall. ‘We can set up a defensive position here and be on the outskirts of Cremona tomorrow with a full twelve hours of daylight ahead. There is ample water and the ground is soft enough to dig.’

‘We should continue.’ Licinius Proculus, the Praetorian prefect, had accompanied Otho’s brother Titianus from Rome and shared his authority. ‘We can march another four or five miles before we have to make camp. Perhaps age wearies you, consul?’ The words were accompanied by a smile but his voice was heavy with sarcasm. ‘I’m sure we can find you a carriage.’

Paulinus had commanded great armies and fought more battles than he could count. The insult made no more than a scuff on his armour. ‘You are right, Proculus, I am getting old, but I am perfectly capable of riding another five miles. And age means I need not defer to a man whose closest acquaintance with the blood and guts of battle has been breaking plebeian heads in the Forum during a bread riot.’ The barb was accompanied by a vicious, shark-toothed smile. ‘If we meet the enemy on the march, he will have travelled four miles and be as fresh as the moment he broke fast. We will have marched thirty in two days and even you must have noted the shambles behind us.’ He gestured back along the road, where auxiliaries mixed haphazardly with legionaries, and pack mules and baggage carts had forced great gaps between cohorts and centuries. ‘Only a fool would put himself in a position where his foes could bring him to battle with two hours to darkness. You have fought a night action, perhaps, Proculus, in your bed at the Castra Praetoria?’

Benignus, who had ridden at Valerius’s side all day, nodded quietly in agreement. Aquila, the Thirteenth’s commander, had bristled at the suggestion of lack of organization in the column, but he gave his support to Paulinus. ‘And we should send our scouts further ahead. If we meet Vitellius’s forces on the march they will smash the column before we can deploy. You have seen the ground to the north: a nightmare of bushes, vines and ditches. We must have time to clear a line of fire or they will be on us before we know it.’

‘Or we among them,’ Titianus suggested tartly, ‘if we show more offensive spirit than has been hitherto displayed. My brother’s orders were to press the enemy.’

‘Your brother is not here,’ Paulinus snapped.

They were still arguing when an exhausted Imperial messenger rode up, instantly identifiable by the yellow cape that warned no man to delay him. He looked from one officer to the other, seeking a leader and evidently not finding one. There was an odd moment of comedy while Paulinus and Celsus jostled for position with Proculus and Titianus before Titianus accepted the dispatch. He broke the seal and opened the cylindrical leather pouch. Proculus stood at his shoulder frowning as he read the contents.

‘My brother chides us for our lack of progress.’ His tight smile said the wording was more forthright. ‘He demands to know why we have not brought the enemy to battle.’

Paulinus sniffed. ‘Very well, we will continue, but I ask that my protest be noted in case of disaster. And Aquila is right: those idle cavalrymen must probe another five miles further ahead.’

There was no disaster, just another few weary miles and a camp site with little water on stony ground that defeated even the strongest mattocks. The following day began like any other with its dawn chorus of coughs and farts, the soft murmur of thousands of men lost in the low mist.

Valerius was preparing for another long day in the saddle when Marcus, the lanista who was now a centurion, approached apologetically.

‘We lost another twenty in the night,’ he said, confirming what Valerius had feared. A few men had deserted before the march began, and more on the first night. ‘They’re not soldiers,’ Marcus explained. ‘They expected a quick campaign, a little bit of glory and the chance to spend their winnings as free men. What they’ve had is day after day of ankle-breaking marches, bad food and lives thrown away by a man who wasn’t fit to command a tannery’s piss pots.’

‘They signed up for this.’ Valerius tried unsuccessfully to work up the anger the desertions merited. These men weren’t soldiers, they were slaves trained to fight. ‘And the prize wasn’t just money, it was their freedom. If they’re caught they will either die on a cross or go back to the arena, where they’ll die anyway.’

Marcus nodded, but the look in his eyes told Valerius he should be asking why men marked for death should be prepared to take their chances on the run rather than fighting under the command of men like Titianus, Proculus and Celsus.

‘Tell them Orfidius Benignus is a fine man and a fine soldier. The First Adiutrix will be in good hands when it meets the enemy.’ He hesitated. ‘And tell them Gaius Valerius Verrens, Hero of Rome, will be proud to stand beside them with a sword in his hand tomorrow.’ Marcus grinned and strode off to carry the message, but Valerius’s thoughts were already elsewhere. A sword, but no shield. For the first time in days he felt the loss of the wooden hand and he tried to shrug off the feeling that it might be some kind of omen. He had survived the siege of Placentia. He would survive the battle, if there was a battle. He looked out over the encampment to the north, where the pale line of the Alps showed where he and Serpentius had risked their lives all those weeks earlier. What had it all been for? The thought came to him like a whisper on the air. There was one way to make the trials of recent months worthwhile. When it was over he would go to Domitia and offer her his protection. The decision gave him comfort, but he drew his gladius and set off to find an armourer in any case.

On the march an hour later, he noticed that the men were warier and less eager than on previous days. The marine legionaries of the Adiutrix kept up the pace, fired by pride and a determination to be as good as the men of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth who marched in front of them, but gradually the gladiators began to lag behind. Valerius rode forward and found Benignus at the head of the legion.

‘I’d like to borrow your eagle and a few of your men,’ Valerius said, and explained what he had in mind.

Benignus had noticed the gap between the leading cohorts and the gladiators. ‘Of course, as long as you bring them back.’

Valerius laughed. ‘If I don’t I will find you another.’

Dismounting, he handed the reins of his horse to Serpentius. He called to Florus, the aquilifer, marching at the head of the legion’s headquarters staff in his lion headdress and polished breastplate with the gleaming symbol of office he had vowed to fight and die for. Together, they dropped back through the column until Valerius saw the man he was looking for.

‘Juva, I need you and your best singers. I seem to remember the crew of the Waverider had good voices.’

The big Nubian grinned and chose four men to join them. They strode back to where the gladiators loitered, and Valerius told him what they intended. Juva snorted dismissively. ‘If they do not want to fight, send them home. The Adiutrix does not need them, the crew of the Waverider does not need them and Juva does not need them.’

Valerius leaned close and said softly: ‘You may have been in bar brawls, my friend, and you have withstood siege behind strong walls, but you have never been in battle. Believe me, when the time comes you will welcome any man who stands beside you as the enemy comes, and dies, and dies again, and keeps coming, and be pleased to call him brother.’

Juva’s nostrils flared, but the dark eyes softened and he nodded solemnly. Soon they were among the gladiators, with their odd weapons and ludicrous, antiquated armour: secutores, with their short swords; provocatores with their long, thin blades; a giant murmillo in full war gear and a fish tail helmet; a dark-skinned Scythian with a pair of throwing axes at his belt of the type Serpentius, who had once been one of these men, favoured; fighters dressed as griffin-crested Thracians, and Celts with bare chests and checked trews; even a few men without armour carrying the three-pronged spear of the retiarius. They had only two things in common: Valerius had insisted that every man should be issued with a scutum, the big curve-edged shield every legionary carried that was as much an offensive weapon as a defensive one, and their reluctance to be part of the army of Otho.

He had arranged for Marcus’s century to lead the cohort and he fell in step beside the lanista, greeting him as a friend and talking to him as an equal in a voice loud enough for twenty or thirty men around him to hear. ‘They tell me the gladiator cohort isn’t prepared to fight?’

‘No!’ a veteran of the arena shouted. ‘We’re just fussy about who we fight and what we fight for.’

‘You’re fighting for your Emperor.’

‘Then why isn’t he here to fight with us?’ This voice came from further back in the ranks.

‘Because he has better things to do.’ A laugh rippled through the column. ‘And because he’s not as stupid as we are.’ The laughter gained intensity. Valerius continued. ‘You took an oath. You’re fighting for your lives …’

‘And money.’

‘… and money. But before you live, you have to be prepared to die.’

‘I don’t want to die for some rich bastard who’s sitting back in Brixellum drinking wine and screwing somebody else’s woman.’

‘Neither do I.’ This time Valerius joined in the laughter and he felt himself warming to these men.

He gestured to Florus to raise the eagle and the former marine flourished the standard high, turning the gilt pole so that every man could see the spread wings, gaping beak and fierce, glinting eyes. ‘This is what you’re fighting for. This piece of brass covered in gold. But it’s not just brass and gold. It’s an eagle. It is your eagle and it contains the spirit of your legion.’ The laughter died away and the murmurs of dissent faded. Every man’s eye was on the eagle and the only sound was the metallic crunch of hundreds of marching sandals. Valerius allowed his voice to grow in strength, remembering a speech Suetonius Paulinus had made more than eight years earlier on a slope that soon after was slick with blood. ‘You’re not just a mob now. You’re not just a rabble of ex-slaves trained to kill each other. You are the Tenth cohort of the Legio I Adiutrix. You don’t fight for a man. You don’t even fight for an Emperor. You fight and die for this, and you fight and die for each other. Forget everything that’s gone before. You are part of a legion now, and some time tomorrow or the day after you will meet other legions. Good legions. Veteran legions. Who will do their best to kill you.’ A murmur ran through the listening men and he thought he’d gone too far, but, from somewhere, he found a moment of inspiration. ‘And while they’re doing their best to kill you, you’ll be killing them, because you’re better than them. Those legions will have an eagle and if you take away a legion’s eagle, you take away its soul. You take away its courage. If you take its eagle, it means you’ve won.’ He sensed them rising to him, the heat of battle joy swelling inside them. ‘So tomorrow or the next day you will bring me an eagle, and together we will present it to Emperor Marcus Salvius Otho Augustus, and I promise you that Marcus Salvius Otho Augustus will not just give you your freedom, and your money, he will give you land, so much land that you will live like kings for the rest of your lives.’ The message was passed along the lines of marching men and they roared their approval. He had another message, the message he had intended to send, but now that message stuck in his throat as he heard the chant. ‘Valerius! Valerius! Valerius!’ He found Marcus grinning at him and a smile split Juva’s dark face. ‘Sing, you bastards,’ he somehow found his voice, ‘and pick your feet up, because tomorrow we will fight and tomorrow we will win and tomorrow the Emperor will have his eagle.’

Juva’s deep, resonant tones roared out the first verse of the pornographic marching song that had driven the legions of Rome from the snow-capped mountains of west Britannia to the deserts of Africa from the super-heated sands of Syria to the cool blue seas off Lusitania. The March of Marius.

There was a mule, he was no fool,

He had a girl in every fort,

Another one in every port.

In Allifae she was not shy …

They didn’t know the words, and in truth it was not Homer, but they joined in with a will and Valerius felt them surging behind him, their legs automatically taking the rhythm of the song. Up ahead he knew the men of the First Adiutrix would have heard it too and would push on harder still. He grinned, because this was what he lived for. Hardship, yes. But comradeship, too. These men would stand together and die together, and that was all he needed. And, perhaps, they just might bring the Emperor his eagle.

Away in the mist another man listened to the song with a semblance of a smile on his pale features. He did not smile because of the song, but because of the name that had preceded it. Something primeval gripped the very centre of Claudius Victor’s being. If the gods of battle were kind, his brother would have his revenge. He wrapped the wolfskin cloak tighter around him and led his patrol back towards Cremona.