The Gods of War

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

They came year after year, new proconsuls sent by the Senate to fight what had become known as ‘The Fiery War’, all with the same aim; Aquila watched them come and go, despising each one a little more than the last, because Roman legionaries would die for the careers of these avaricious politicians. They arrived mouthing words of noble purpose and, naturally, the soldiers hoped this new man would be different from the last; they were usually disappointed and their discipline suffered for it.

The legions they brought did nothing to increase the strength of the army; with conflict now permanent, these new levies were needed just to replace the losses. The Roman base camp on the frontier had been in existence so long it was now like a small town. Nearly every soldier had a local ‘wife’, an attachment that did little to keep them out of the wine shops and brothels, which had been set up outside the camp walls. Most cared only for the spoils of war, so that they could sustain their drinking and whoring, as well as satisfy the raucous demands from their local women that they provide for their bastards. They killed without thinking, marched wherever their commander sent them, and ceased to moan about their use as fodder for another’s ambition, as long as they received their share of the spoils.

Aquila, alone in the princeps of the 18th, avoided permanent attachments, enduring the good-natured ribbing he got from Fabius, who enjoyed a complicated series of liaisons. He consolidated the position of senior centurion in his legion and had become, without trying, someone to be reckoned with, even impressing the local levies of axillaries by learning the language. It was only after he had returned to Rome that Pomponius realised that the tribunes he dismissed for electing Aquila Terentius had all been appointees of Quintus Cornelius; that, and the whispering campaign they mounted against him, cost him his triumph. The message, to avoid interfering in legionary elections, was not lost on his successors. Aquila was always voted in, and by so comprehensive a margin that he held the post no matter who he offended.

He tried to keep his men up to the mark by personal example, and garnered decorations, as well as scars, for his personal bravery on every operation. After the first few years, a succession of young tribunes, usually clients of the serving general, arrived from Rome to take command, replacing more experienced men. Most found, after an initial attempt to overawe him, that it was better to work through, as well as learn from, the formidable primus pilus. He took as much care of them as he did the rankers, well aware that their birth and background sometimes caused them to be foolishly brave. Whilst their attitude to personal danger was something he admired, it did nothing to alter his feelings for a system that elevated such novices over soldiers with long experience.

He was cherished by the men for the care he took for their safety, while being heaped in an equal measure of verbal ordure for his uncompromising methods. His training, in an army remarkable for that attribute, was exhausting. He commanded troops who, once they had been separated from women and the wine gourd, could run five miles and still fight. Given their efficiency, they were always in the thick of the battle, often, as in the case of Pomponius, engaged in snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, yet, thanks to his iron discipline and tactical common sense, the 18th’s casualties remained relatively low.

The senior commanders generally loathed him; first for the way he questioned their orders, but more seriously for the annoying habit he had of being right. Time and again he informed them that they were fighting a war which required lightly armed, mobile forces, backed by a powerful cavalry arm, or one with high-built towers and ballistae to destroy and overcome fortifications. And he gave each new senator the same message; there was only one way to actually stop the war, and that was to go beyond the pastoral tribes who inhabited the frontier and attack the hill forts of the interior, starting with Pallentia.

The determined ones, already aware of this, would nod sagely, before they looked at the problem. Certainly, they would lay plans and make arrangements, but, with only a year to make their mark, the idea evaporated as the weeks of preparation slipped into months. Aquila watched the process with a jaundiced eye, until the day came when he and the men under his command were ordered to attack a softer target. No senator wanted to go home with nothing, and that led to a great deal of hard, brutal fighting; it also made a bad situation worse.

With a really lazy general it sufficed to accuse some innocent tribe of revolt, sack their camps, steal their wealth and sell the people into slavery. The idea that the system was corrupt had first occurred to Aquila before he ever set foot in Spain. Little of what he had observed since did anything to change his opinion: that the Republic was a rich man’s pasture, from which the mass of citizens were excluded.

The day she found out that her son might have survived, Claudia could not contain herself. All her normal reserves deserted her. Sextius, full of concern, found her weeping, not aware that these were tears of joy, mixed with the fear that this was yet another false trail, but, as ever, he was concerned with appearances. What would his host, Cassius Barbinus, say if he emerged from his bedchamber with his wife red-eyed from crying? Then, remembering the reputation of his fellow-senator, he smirked; the old satyr would probably approve, assuming that Sextius had ill-used Claudia. Doubtless, with such a gossip the story of his marital debauchery would be all over Rome in a flash.

Dinner was a trial; Claudia wanted nothing to do with food, she wanted to go back to see Annius Dabo on his farm, to ask him more about Piscius, his father, a man whose ashes had long since been scattered in the wind. Not that the son was very forthcoming; he had given her a name, a bit of a description; an age, younger than Annius, that placed this Aquila near the right year. She knew that this boy had left the farm with some soldiers many years before, heading for Sicily, but there was little else; no mention of that golden charm she had wound round his ankle on the night of his birth, the eagle that would positively identify him.

‘The name,’ she said, not aware that she had spoken out loud.

‘Sorry, my dear?’ said Sextius, while Cassius Barbinus and the other guests looked at her strangely.

‘It’s nothing.’

Claudia forced herself to smile, but in her heart she was thinking that Aquila was an unusual name for a child. Yet you might choose that name if something about the infant led you to do so.

Mancinus dragged his eyes away from the gold eagle round the senior centurion’s neck. For reasons he could not understand, this object unnerved him; come to that, the owner got under his skin merely for the way he looked at his commanding general.

‘I want you to take a small force and reconnoitre this fort. I intend to invest it and I want up-to-date intelligence. And I will move the army to a forward area to be ready, away from the camp and its comforts.’

Mancinus pointed to Pallentia, clearly marked on the map before him. Aquila leant forward, the decorations that adorned his tunic flashing in the light from the lamp. His charm swung free, so he took it in his hand to hold it out of the way. Mancinus, now that he could not see it, felt relieved, but that did little to dent his curiosity. It was very Celtic in appearance, very likely the property of some rich Iberian chieftain. That was what he wanted, a cartload of similar trophies to take back to Rome.

‘Even a small force should be a tribune’s command,’ said Aquila.

The senator was annoyed, and not for the first time. Terentius seemed to be totally unaware of the respect due to a man of his rank. He sought to put him in his place, quite unaware of the pit he was digging for himself.

‘None of the men I brought out with me have the necessary experience.’

Aquila looked at him without speaking, but the glare said it all; the wisdom of arriving in Spain, every year, with a whole new batch of tribunes, was the question in his eyes. Mancinus was thinking that those same tribunes were fools; they should never have elected this man as primus pilus. He was unaware that he would have faced a mutiny from his soldiers if they had dared appoint anyone else. Aquila Terentius might wear the golden eagle on his neck, but to the rankers of the 18th it was just as much their talisman as his. The legionaries had seen him kiss it just before a fight, watched him go into situations where no man had the right to survive and emerge with barely a scratch; take cohort after cohort through the enemy lines without loss, and damn tribunes, legates, quaestors and generals openly for their stupidity.

He kept them fed and warm where the means allowed, and never left a comrade to die if there was any chance of rescue. And then, to temper his power, there was Fabius, who debunked his ‘uncle’ at every turn, and acted as a conduit for any man with a grievance. Little flogging occurred in Aquila’s legion unless it involved the theft of another man’s goods and no one could remember anyone being broken at the wheel. Discipline was tight, and all the more effective for being, in the main, self-imposed. He was a paragon, and all the more unwelcome in the tent of a poltroon because of it.

Mancinus struggled to hold the stare, then coughed and turned away, silently cursing the horns of his personal dilemma. He had come here, like the others, anticipating easy conquests and personal gain, and on the way it had looked simple. Break an alliance with a tribe that had already submitted to Rome, kill their warrior menfolk and enslave the rest; demand a triumph to display your booty and retire to a life of ease, interspersed with a little politics. Quintus Cornelius had done it, as had practically every commander in the ten years since, and the Senate, for all the huffing and puffing of some members, had usually left well alone. The majority howled down the cries of the few with honour that these men should be impeached, and used procedural motions to nullify the machinations of the new juries manned by the knights.

But that was the problem; the war had dragged on too long. The siren voices were growing louder, demanding results from a conflict that drained the resources of the state while it enriched the generals. His predecessors had swept things pretty clean, so that all the tribes with anything worth taking now occupied heavily fortified positions and refused to deal with Roman proconsuls. Mancinus had to satisfy the Senate, as well as make his own mark; if there was no other way to achieve his aim, he would have to attack this fortress.

‘Might I suggest that I take a pair of the new tribunes along? It will be good for them.’

The consul turned back to look as the other man stood upright. Aquila was a foot taller than him with closely cropped hair, red-gold against his tanned face. He had as many scars as decorations, but it was the eyes that commanded attention. They pinned you like an unlucky fly, demanding that you pay heed to any words he uttered. It was as though Aquila were the general and noble Mancinus a mere ranker.

The senator sniffed loudly. ‘How can I ask a tribune to take orders from you?’

‘Just ask them if they want to stay alive, General.’

He had already thought of a pair he wanted to take; the pick of a pretty poor bunch, twin brothers, and he had a definite suspicion that one of them was a pederast. But Gnaeus Calvinus kept his hands to himself, and showed proper care for the troops he commanded, never putting his comfort before theirs. His brother Publius also had all the makings of a proper soldier, being physically tough, and he led from the front during training. As a new tribune, he had quietly stopped the habitual ribbing that anyone in his position was subjected to by choosing the toughest man in his unit, taking him to a quiet spot, and beating the living daylights out of him.

‘Besides,’ Aquila continued, ‘the two I have in mind don’t seem the type to stand on their dignity.’

‘You have in mind!’

The centurion was not the least bit abashed at his general’s reaction. ‘They seem the most promising. Better they learn now than that they learn too late. If you want to go into battle with even your best men floundering around, wondering what to do, then deny my request.’

‘So you’re going to be ordered about by a peasant?’ asked Gaius Trebonius, as he watched the Calvinus twins preparing to leave.

‘I’d like to see you call him that to his face,’ replied Gnaeus.

‘Fancy him, do we?’

Publius reacted angrily. ‘You will oblige me, Gaius, by keeping quiet.’

‘It’s just as well,’ lisped Trebonius. ‘I don’t think your men, even the roughest and toughest, would be too keen to go off to a quiet place with Gnaeus. I think that they’d rather take you.’

‘That’s another thing I don’t want talked about.’

Trebonius laughed. ‘Too late, my friend. What you did to that ranker is common gossip in the camp. Mind, I wouldn’t try anything on Aquila Terentius, either of you.’

‘Will you shut your mouth!’ said Gnaeus quietly, who felt that having endured such a ribbing all his life, he deserved some peace.

Trebonius pouted. ‘You better hurry, dears, your peasant will be getting restless.’

The dust of North Africa was no more endearing than the snows of Gallia Cisaplina, though Marcellus was fortunate to occupy a villa that overlooked the sea, so that the breeze took some of the heat out of the noonday sun. This was his fourth provincial posting in ten years, each one interrupted by a very brief sojourn in Rome. He had borne these travels stoically, having realised, after the expiry of his duties in the north, that Quintus was inadvertently doing him a service. Having held posts in Macedonia, Syria and now here in Utica, his knowledge of the problems of governing the Roman domains, which would have been superficial and second-hand had he stayed in the city, was comprehensive and personal. His understanding of the law, endlessly honed in the trivia of far-flung courts, would be unrivalled should he ever find himself pleading a case in Rome.

Each day he rose before dawn, carrying out his own exercises before the sun could make such effort intolerable. First, to warm his muscles, he would wrestle. The bout would begin gently enough, but would soon take on all aspects of a true contest, since Marcellus only employed opponents who had a good chance of beating him. This would be followed by practice with javelin, spear and short sword, the wooden posts he used for these shuddering with the weight of the blows he delivered. Finally, a swim in the sea, followed by a dousing in fresh water, would prepare him for his breakfast.

Then he would meet with his son’s tutors, both Greeks and both strict, to check on the progress of their studies, martial and educational. After a brief word with Claudanilla he would mount his chariot, taking the straight road to the provincial city, using that to put his animals through their paces. Locals had grown used to this quaestor who, every morning at the same hour, flew past them, lashing his whip above the heads of his black, foam-flecked horses.

Here in Africa, he had responsibilities that transcended what had gone before. Avidius Probis, the proconsul to whom he served as second in command, was the wrong type of man for government. He hated effort, preferring instead the luxury that this province, which had once been Carthage, provided. Avidius had also taken a Numidian wife, Inoboia, one of the many sisters of the king, Massina.

This had cemented relations with the man who ruled the lands to the south, all the way to the Atlas Mountains, but the other effect was less positive; the governor tended now to favour local interests over that of the Republic and he had hinted that, once his term of office expired, he would probably settle in Utica, since Inoboia disliked the idea of living in Italy — first, because it was not home, and secondly, because of the prejudices which her near-black colouring would inevitably create amongst the notoriously snobbish Roman elite.

Marcellus found himself doing both his own work and that of his nominal superior. Most quaestors, faced with such a situation, would have lobbied to have him replaced. Not he! Marcellus was governor himself in all but name; provided he deferred to Avidius in those matters about which he cared, and treated his royal Numidian wife with the respect due to her rank, he could do very much as he pleased. This responsibility did not end at the Utican border. In the name of the Republic, the quaestor was required to treat both with the King of Numidia, as well as the ruler of Mauritania, people who supplied paid cavalry to the armies of the empire. And the time was rapidly approaching when he could stand for office in Rome itself. He would do it with Quintus’s help if it were available, without if necessary. That would, of course, make it harder. So, from time to time, his mind would turn to that chest of documents left to him by his father.

Many of the men named in them had died in the last ten years, but most were still alive, probably still committing the kind of misdemeanours that Lucius had uncovered. If all else failed, he would use that information to assist his election to the aedileship.

Aquila set out with the two tribunes, accompanied by twenty of his fittest men. They left the encampment after dark and headed south, this to avoid the prying eyes of those engaged in watching the activities of the Roman garrison. An hour before dawn they turned inland, climbing up through the hills, their movements guided by strong moonlight. A wooded copse provided shelter as the sun rose and the party ate their cold food by a trickling brook. The smell of pine needles was strong and the copse hummed with insects. They took off the bulk of their uniforms, breastplates, greaves and helmets and threw them into the extra cloaks that Aquila had made them bring along.

‘Do we bury them?’ asked Publius.

Aquila shook his head. ‘No. Very little sunlight gets in here, so fresh-dug earth will be obvious for a long time and anyone spotting them will be bound to dig them up.’ He looked up into the trees. ‘Tie the bundles tight and hide them high in the trees. Up there, if anyone sees them at all, they’ll look like beehives.’

‘What if the person who does spot them collects honey?’

‘Then they’ll get a surprise,’ he replied with a smile, ‘and since not many of our enemies are given to honey gathering, I doubt we’ll be in too much danger. Now, let’s look at our route.’

They had been studying the map for two days, so they knew the way, but Aquila was concerned about how they would use the terrain. Patiently, standing at the very edge of the trees, he explained to the youngsters how they would use the hillsides, clumps of trees and bushes and the shadow caused by the position of the sun to minimise the risk of being observed. Gnaeus wondered why he was bothering, since he was there to lead them, then he realised that this strange self-contained man was going out of his way to teach them everything he thought they should know, and what he said could not have been further from the rigid protocols of formal combat with hand or weapon that they had learnt on the Campus Martius.

‘You can’t move in open country without being observed, and people don’t actually have to see you to know you’re around. The skyline has to be avoided, for, as a silhouette, you are too obvious, but even down below that is the case. Every bird you startle tells an enemy where you are, just as the silence of the animals will let them know you’re coming, minutes before you arrive. But the same applies to them, so keep a sharp lookout for unusual movements. We, ourselves, will move at a steady, gentle pace. I will go ahead to a point where you can see me, then the men will follow in pairs and you can bring up the rear.’

He smiled to take the sting out of his next words. ‘By the time you two blunder along in our path, every fly will be used to a human presence.’

‘Meaning we won’t startle too many birds,’ said Publius.

‘That’s right, and by the time we return I fully intend that you’ll take the point, while I’ll be bringing up the rear.’

‘And if we are seen?’ asked Gnaeus.

‘Let’s hope it’s not someone we’ll have to fight.’ Aquila turned back into the trees, followed by his twin trainees. They saw that the soldiers had dug a shallow hole and filled it with water. They were now busy adding the earth they had dug up. ‘Smear your smocks and the metal parts of your weapons with mud. It’ll make you harder to see.’

It took a full week to reach Pallentia, by which time the Calvinus twins wondered if they were actually cut out for life in the army. Not that they alone had suffered; filthy and gaunt, there was no way now to tell they were Romans. It was just that their inferiors seemed more able to cope than they, but during that time they grew to understand Aquila Terentius, and to appreciate some of the problems that beset the Roman army in Spain.

They knew there had been casualties in this ongoing war, but neither had realised that they numbered well over one hundred thousand men lost in the last twenty years — more than half of them Roman citizens. Aquila was careful to point out that the men they were with now would probably be soldiers regardless of the dilectus; most, indeed, had slipped through the property qualifications for service and acquired the right to serve as princeps because of experience.

It was hard to argue with the centurion’s case that neither Rome, nor her allies, could afford losses at the rate they were suffering and expect to field armies sufficient to hold all the frontiers; that the solution lay in the removal of the archaic class- and property-based system of recruitment: if you owned land, you were eligible for service; if you were penniless, you were passed over. This would allow the farmers to tend their land, lessen the Republic’s dependence on imported corn, and end the abuse by which rich men bought up derelict farmland for ranching, the land having been let go to the bad because the men needed to tend it were serving as legionaries.

Little did they know that he was expressing the very things that had ruined his adopted parents. Clodius had been a legionary and had served the Republic of which he was a citizen; the reward was ruin, because when he returned from service, the land had gone to rack — Fulmina on her own could not tend it — while he lacked the funds for implements or seed to bring his land back to fruitfulness, and, in truth, it would have broken him to try. The Terentius farm had been sold to Cassius Barbinus and the already filthy rich senator had turned it into pasture for sheep and cattle. Reduced to a gimcrack hut by a stream, and work as a day labourer, no wonder Clodius had agreed to serve in place of his prosperous neighbour Piscius Dabo, when the latter was suddenly, and unexpectedly, called back to the colours.

‘And where will we get our soldiers?’ asked Publius.

‘When was the last time you looked in the streets of Rome? It’s bursting with men. So is every city in Italy.’

‘That useless mob. They’re a rabble,’ said Gnaeus.

‘Wrong, Tribune.’ He waved his arm around to include the men he had brought along with him. ‘They’re probably just like us. I mean no disrespect, but any man here, given a chance, could hold your rank. All this talk of needing noble blood to lead men into battle is a lot of patrician shit.’

Aquila grinned, noticing how their loyalties fought with their logic. He stood up, making his way to the crest of the hill they would have to cross to avoid a ten-league detour. ‘But we could talk all day and change nothing. The old windbags in the Senate have got it all sewn up. Personally, I couldn’t care if someone lopped off their heads.’

‘And what about being governed?’

‘Would you use that word to describe what we’ve got now? Go ask the men in the auxiliary legions what they think. Those togate bastards are happy to spill their blood, but they won’t even give them citizenship.’

Publius adopted a bland look. ‘You are aware, Aquila Terentius, that our father is a senator?’

‘’Course I am. Just as, in time, you’ll be one too. What worries me is that people like us will still be here in Spain doing drawings of places like Pallentia. Let’s move, quickly. We’ll do the crest one at a time and through the trees.’

The report they eventually submitted to Mancinus, ostensibly a tribunate one, did little to please him. He had called a full conference of his officers to discuss the prospects, placing Aquila, the true author, well to the rear so as to avoid his negative interventions, but that failed to work, since the Calvinus twins, who had taken Aquila’s observations and turned them into the proper, educated Latin form, seemed to share his pessimism. The general was now regretting the obligation to their father that had manoeuvred them onto his complement of officers, let alone the fact that he had allowed them to go on the reconnaissance, but his biggest mistake had been to ask Gnaeus Calvinus to read the report, assuming that he would put a gloss on matters to please his patron.

‘So, to conclude, sir, there’s insufficient forage and food in the vicinity to supply the whole army. We will be required to build a road and at least three bridges, all of which will have to be held so that supplies can be maintained, if Pallentia can’t be taken by direct assault, which in our opinion it cannot.’

‘Why not?’ demanded Mancinus’s quaestor and second-in-command, Gavius Aspicius.

Gnaeus gave him an odd look. Gavius had read the report so he knew as well as anyone that the place would withstand an army if those within the ramparts were numerous and well fed, so the only hope was a siege. Carefully Gnaeus went over the arguments again, returning in due course to the proposed solution. The hill fort had a supply of water that good engineering could divert. It was the one fault in the comprehensive system of defences that Aquila had spotted. The Celts, not themselves as talented in that field as the Romans, had failed to secure it absolutely.

But the method of cutting the supply would involve the engineers working very close to the earth bastions that jutted out from the main walls. If the Romans gathered to assault that section, the defenders would gather to oppose them. Aquila’s idea was an attack elsewhere, not designed to breach the defences but to hold their enemies at that point. This would allow a second group to engage the lightly protected alternative and damn the water supply. Then Mancinus could sit back and wait for the cistern inside the hill fort to dry up. Once that happened, the defenders would have to come out and fight, just to try and restore the supply. If they did, they would face defeat against any enemy who knew exactly where they would strike. Failure to do anything would see them expire from thirst within the walls.

‘And how long will all that take?’ barked the quaestor, clearly as displeased by the prospect of a siege as his commander.

The voice from the rear made them all spin round to look at Aquila. ‘If you can tell how much water they store and predict that we’ll have no rain, I’m sure we can provide an answer. With luck it will be weeks. If not, it could take a year.’

Gavius Aspicius turned back to face Mancinus.

‘This is nonsense. These are barbarians we’re facing. I say that one determined assault, delivered quickly, will breach the defences.’ A murmur of agreement came from the senior officers present, all of whom had a vested interest in a quick result. ‘If we stop to build a road, to construct bridges, they’ll have weeks to get the place ready and, since we can’t be sure that the other tribes will not attack, guarding that route will deplete our forces.’

Aspicius stepped forward and swept his arm in an arc over the map. ‘But if we force-march the entire army to Pallentia, and press home the attack without resting, we’ll catch them unawares.’

The general was nodding, since these were the kind of words he wanted to hear, and so were most of the others, either through a conviction that Aspicius was right, or merely a desire to agree with their patron. The quaestor, ramming home his point, slammed his fist down on the table to emphasise the point. ‘That’s the lesson we want to teach these tribesmen. That Rome can destroy them whenever we have the will.’

Mancinus stood, chest puffed out, clearly showing his spirits had been raised by those stirring words. ‘Gentlemen, it is time to sound the horns, time to march, and time to let our foes know that their years of causing turmoil are at an end. Call the priests and let us look for an auspicious day to begin our campaign.’

Unseen, Aquila marched out of the tent in disgust, knowing that, for no purpose, more men were going to die.