The Art of War

Chapter 74

Rome, 20 December AD 69

Geminus

‘ Step up! Shields locked! One step forward!.. Hold that line!’

Days, months, years of training were tempered here, in the heat of battle. Men moved without thinking, their bodies responding long before their minds caught up, and the wall they made with their shields was flawless.

Against other legionaries, we would have been unassailable, but Antonius’ blue-scarved cavalrymen brought their long spears when they came at us from the side — Juvens had been right about their flanking manoeuvre — and they drove them over the tops of our shields as if we were barbarian warriors, not fellow Romans.

I felt iron hiss past my right ear and jerked to my left, cracking my helmet hard against Juvens’ — he had mirrored my move.

We bounced upright again, and ducked back down as the spears twisted and stabbed. Left and right, green-marked men were falling. Others stepped in to take their place, but there was only one way this could go if we stayed as we were.

‘We need to move back!’

It was hard to be heard over the din of battle; iron clashed on mail, on iron, on flesh. The air flowed hot with lifeblood, the ground was a smear of ordure and spilled intestines.

I shouted it again, to my right this time, where the signallers stood. ‘Sound the turn! We need to move back up the street. Form a square, wheel right, shields to the outside, back up the street. Can you do that?’

Even as I shouted, a spear thrust caught the signaller in the throat and he went down like a felled tree. The nearest legionary caught his horn almost as a reflex — it doesn’t do to lose the signals in battle — but he was looking at it as if he had never played one in his life.

‘Give me that!’

I grabbed the horn, put tight lips to a mouthpiece still warm from the man just dead, and prayed for help in remembering how to play.

The help came. I was rusty, but adequate, and the notes were a ripple of silver rising over the black mess of battle.

As before, decades of training paid off and our men spun and wheeled to my direction, but the enemy knew the signals just as well as we did and at every turn or counter-turn the blue cavalry was already waiting, and, soon, mass upon mass of infantry, as Antonius Primus loosed his reserve cohorts into the fray.

‘Back! Back! ’

Fighting, we fell back into the city. The enemy forces came at us like a flood. Every street was a butchery, every open square an ambush. The people were up out of harm’s way, but we were left on the ground, caught in an orgy of killing.

I fitted my shoulder to Juvens’ and hacked and hacked and ‘Shit! Disengage. Left in a hundred paces! Now! ’

With me and Juvens were Halotus, Lentulus and Thrasyllus, whose father had disowned him for following Vitellius; good men, all of them; friends.

On my command, they disengaged and sprinted for the dark mouth of an alley ahead and to our left. The Blues-men we had been fighting saw the open street we had just abandoned and preferred it to a black, stinking alley that might have held a hundred of us. They forged on past, leaving us standing in the dark.

We watched their retreating backs. Juvens was half bent, with his hands propped on his knees. He peered up at me from below the flop of his hair.

‘Why this way?’

‘Because I just saw Jocasta come down here with Caenis, Vespasian’s woman, and the boy who sold himself to us as a messenger.’

‘Jocasta? You mean Lucius’ lover?’

‘Lucius’ lover who also seduced Caecina before he marched north and defected,’ I said, flatly. I had a very bad feeling about this, but that didn’t matter compared to the prospect of catching Caenis. ‘If we can take these three alive, we can secure the throne for Vitellius and his line for the next hundred years. They can’t be far ahead of us.’

Juvens pushed himself upright. He straightened the flowing green scarf at his arm, re-tied the knot. ‘That’s easy then. We get into pairs and search every house in the row. If we can’t catch two women and a youth barely shaving, we deserve to lose Rome.’ He threw me a grin. ‘Half a year’s pay says that if Jocasta’s here, then Trabo’s not far behind. If he turns up, leave him to me. I have an oath to Jupiter, and after last night’s fire now would be a good time to keep it.’

It was the closest I had heard him get to accepting responsibility for what happened at the temple, and by then it didn’t matter.