The Art of War

Chapter 51

Rome, 18 December AD 69

Trabo

I had been with Julius Claudianus and the gladiators in Tarracina for nine days when Pantera came banging on the gates.

It was a heady, exhilarating time. In theory, we had marched down the Appian Way with the cohort of the Urban Guard to put down the revolt at Misene, but I don’t know of a single man who believed that was our true task; certainly none did by the time we’d reached the outskirts of the city.

I don’t know if he’d been coached by Pantera or was simply using his natural leadership, but Julius Claudianus had a deft touch with the men.

He moved from fireside to fireside in the evenings after we’d camped and gradually turned the conversation to Vespasian and how good his campaign had been in the east, and what had Vitellius ever done and wasn’t Lucius a complete nightmare?

Imagine Rome if he ever became emperor, which he was clearly angling to do. He never said any of this, he just steered others to say it, and so yet more to think it.

And he never answered those questions, just left the men to talk them over amongst themselves so that by the time we got to Misene they were practically begging him on bended knee to change sides. So he had to: what else could a good commander do than yield to the wishes of his men? Particularly if they were his wishes in the first place.

Thus two thousand highly trained, loyal and dedicated fighting men became, overnight, two thousand highly trained and dedicated rebels who had no trouble at all in taking Tarracina. It had a stout outer wall, but Julius had paid men on the inside to open the gates for them and there wasn’t even a token resistance.

The drinking and whoring and feasting had started that night and hadn’t stopped. Saturnalia gave them the excuse, but it would have happened anyway. It was still going on the night Pantera came to us, with his rag-tag of followers.

He knocked on the door of the tavern we’d made our headquarters and the first thing I knew of his presence was the sound of his voice asking, ‘Julius Claudianus, is he here?’

Julius was asleep, actually. He shuffled out of his room barely dressed, all farts and sleepy scratchings, cursing at having been woken until he saw who it was, whereupon he became warily alert.

Lit by a single smoking excuse for a candle, we all gathered round while Pantera showed us a dispatch to Vitellius he had stolen en route.

‘This is real,’ he said. ‘Lucius is on the hill above the town. He’ll be on you by dawn like a starving hound on a rats’ nest. You need to move your men out of here before daylight. Get to the boats and scupper any you don’t use in your escape. Lucius has no navy, he won’t be able to follow you.’

There was a long moment’s silence. Julius Claudianus was a big man, solid, with no flab, and now that he was awake you could easily see him at the head of a column, marching hard and fast for battle. He had been a legate once, and led the Misene fleet. It’s what made him perfect for Lucius, and for Pantera. But he was always his own man.

He snapped his fingers and servants began to dress him in front of us: linen undertunic, woollen overtunic, belt with many silver medallions, greaves, sandals…

He said, ‘We can’t run now. We have trained for this for the past three months. The men are desperate to fight.’

‘Your men are singing in poor harmony on the beach. They are not in any fit state to fight.’

Julius Claudianus wrapped his sword belt around his body, slipped the baldric loop over his head. Armed, he was as dangerous to look at as any man I’d met, and I’d been living amongst trained killers for months by then.

Other men were running in, gathering behind him, and they, too, were more stalwart than the off-key singing might have suggested. He ran his glance across them. They straightened under his stare. They were bristling with the anger of men whose pride had been threatened.

He said, ‘Gladiators can fight in any state, believe me. And they won’t run from a battle, even if I ask them to. They’d stab me in the back if they thought I was trying.’ He looked at Pantera down the vast crag of his nose. ‘You didn’t really send us all this way to run at the first flash of a blade?’

Pantera was furious, although it was only because I’d seen it before that I could tell. The clipped consonants and strained patience might have sounded merely weary to any other man.

He said, ‘I didn’t send you all here to die. And you will. Lucius has seven thousand men up that hill and every one of them has something to prove. They are sober, rested and have the advantage of height. There’s no disgrace in leaving now to regroup and attack some other time.’

‘When? After Vitellius has abdicated and we have lost our chance of glory?’ And then, at Pantera’s hard stare, ‘Do you think we don’t hear of such things down here, out of sight of the city?’

Pantera closed his eyes, sought patience, found something close enough.

‘I sent you word of that myself, and Trabo wrote back to me so I know you got it. But someone else must also have sent an order and now a slave is showing Lucius the best routes into the city. We are not the only ones using Tarracina as a proxy for battles being fought over the throne in Rome.’

‘Who betrayed us?’

‘A slave, but I don’t know who sent him. I will find out, but just now my first priority is your safety.’

‘No it isn’t.’ Julius Claudianus smiled, put his great meaty hand on Pantera’s back and turned him round. ‘That’s my worry and I’ll deal with it as I see fit. You are free to go back to Rome and your not-proxy battles.’

It occurred to me rather later than it should have done that the stoutly defiant Julius Claudianus was neither entirely sober nor entirely undrugged. The pinprick of his pupils should have been a clue, but the candle was shining in his eyes and it wasn’t immediately obvious. Poppy, likely. Or one of the mixtures the curse-women make that crumble on to hot coals and sweeten the air. I knew the men had been taking it. I hadn’t realized their commander had been, too.

I said, ‘Perhaps now is not the time-’

‘This is the only time.’ Pantera’s lips were a tight, white line in the candlelight. ‘Lucius isn’t going to give you time to negotiate, or to build defences. He hasn’t that kind of patience.’

He spun, looking round. A hundred men faced him, and more were coming, and none of them was sober, and each of them was fired by pride and drink and poppy. He’d have had to kill them himself to get them to stand down now.

His capitulation showed in a short shake of his head. He turned back to Julius Claudianus. ‘Gather every one of your men. The slave guiding Lucius knows the ways in better than we ever will, so there’s no point in trying to block the gates. We can choose the pinch points to hold and make life difficult, so that anyone who is prepared to go can make it to the ships. We just need to be sure that any that aren’t used are broken: Lucius must not gain a navy by this.’

‘We?’ Julius Claudianus’ laugh was big and bold. ‘You’re not thinking to stay?’

‘I sent you here. I can’t leave you.’

‘Lucius sent us, not you.’

‘Only because I manoeuvred him into it. He was supposed to spend half a month laying siege to a city that could resist for half a year, not find a quick way in and slaughter you all by morning. I won’t have your deaths on my hands.’

‘You don’t. You think you’ve been manipulating us, but we were happy to go where you pushed us. This is our war too, don’t forget. We switched to Vespasian because we believe he will make a better emperor than Lucius. We’re all grown men. We know what we’re doing. Just go.’

‘Julius, you can’t-’

‘Pantera, for fuck’s sake. My men follow me, they don’t follow you, and never will. And we don’t run from trouble.’

‘Then I’ll stay with you.’

‘And let Vitellius win in Rome? Are you mad? The emperor is supposed to abdicate tomorrow. If you think that’s going to go smoothly, you’re a lot less clever than you pretend. The Guard will never let their man stand down. They made him, they’ll keep him. You have to be in Rome to make it happen if you want to see Vitellius gone.’

Julius’ hands were vast, with scars across the backs of old sword wounds, and knuckles crushed repeatedly into hard surfaces. He laid one of them heavily on Pantera’s shoulder.

‘You don’t have to make everything right, just the thing that matters most. Get on your horse. Ride like the wind for Rome. And be ready, whatever happens tomorrow, to fight. Take Trabo with you. He was yours from the start. We’ll miss his cooking, but we’ll manage without it.’

Do you think I should have argued? A part of me wanted to, or at least thought that honour required that I did. But the rest of me knew that to stay was suicide. Leaving with Pantera might be the same, but it felt a little safer.

We rode out soon after: me, Pantera, his two men and the catamite. We slipped on bound feet from the town gates, and even as we mounted we heard the first rhythmic mumble of armed men marching from the hill above the town. Behind us, Tarracina might still have been asleep for all the evidence there was of life.

We stopped at the coaching inn to leave Felix behind for some purpose to which I was not privy. I was standing with the horses when I saw the flames of Tarracina’s destruction begin to unfurl across the horizon, spreading outwards, to meet the first bright light of dawn.

So broke the eighteenth day of December in the first year of the reign of the emperor Vitellius; the day of his promised abdication.