Tribune of Rome

CHAPTER IXX

‘What’s that arsehole up to now?’ Magnus spat as he looked with disgust towards Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo, the commander of the reinforcement column. ‘If we change direction again today I’m going to mutiny.’

‘You need to be under military discipline to mutiny,’ Vespasian reminded his friend as he watched Corbulo engage in another heated exchange with their local guides. ‘And seeing as you’re here masquerading as my freedman, and therefore a civilian, I think that anything you say or do will be ignored, especially by someone as well-born and arrogant as Corbulo.’

Magnus grunted and removed his conical felt cap, the pileus, the sign of a freedman, and wiped his brow. ‘Pompous arsehole,’ he muttered.

They had crossed the border from the Roman province of Macedonia into the client kingdom of Thracia five days earlier. For three days, following the course of the Via Egnatia, they’d marched through the budding orchards and the newly sown cornfields of the narrow coastal plain wedged between the forbidding, cloud-strewn bulk of the southern arm of Rhodope mountain range to the north, and the azure blue of the beautiful but treacherous Thracian sea, sparkling in the warm spring sun, to the south.

Corbulo had received orders, waiting for him at Philippi on the Macedonian border, to rendezvous as soon as possible with Poppaeus Sabinus’ army at Bessapara, on the Hebrus River, in the northwest of the client kingdom, where the northern arm of the Rhodope range abuts the Haemus Mountains. It was here that Poppaeus had the Thracian rebels pinned down in their hilltop stronghold, having defeated their main army in battle about fourteen days before. Corbulo had cursed his luck. He had tried to find out the details of the battle, but the messenger had already departed for Rome to bring news of the victory to the Emperor and Senate.

Being a young and ambitious nobleman he was taking the request for speed very seriously, anxious to arrive before the rebellion was completely crushed and his chances of glory diminished.

They had met their guides and left the road at the eastern end of the Rhodope range, and were now heading northeast through its trackless foothills to pass around to the northern side of the mountains and follow them, northwest, to their destination. They were in the lands of the Caeletae, a tribe that had stayed loyal to Rome and its puppet, King Rhoemetalces, mainly out of hatred for their northern neighbours the Bessi and the Deii, who had revolted the previous year against conscription into the Roman army.

Vespasian grinned at Magnus as they watched Corbulo bellow at the Caeletaean guides, turn his horse and head back down the column towards where they were stationed, at the head of the first cohort of 480 legionary recruits.

‘I think our esteemed leader is just about to push another tribe into rebellion,’ he said, watching the red-faced military tribune approach past the vanguard of 120 auxiliary Gallic cavalry. ‘If he carries on like that we’ll find ourselves dangling in wooden cages over their sacred fires.’

‘I thought it was just the Germans and Celts who did that,’ Magnus replied, easing his travel-weary behind in his saddle.

‘I expect that these barbarians have just as nasty a way of amusing themselves with their captives; let’s hope that Corbulo’s arrogance doesn’t drive them to practise on us.’

‘Tribune,’ Corbulo barked, pulling up his horse next to Vespasian, ‘we are stopping here for the night; those ginger-haired sons of fox bitches are refusing to go any further today. Have the men construct a camp.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And, tribune-’ Corbulo peered at Vespasian over the long, pronounced nose that dominated his thin, angular face ‘-tell Centurion Faustus to double the guard tonight. I don’t trust those bastards, they seem to do everything possible to hinder our progress.’

‘I thought they were loyal to Rome.’

‘The only loyalty these savages have is to their filthy tribe’s rapacious gods. I wouldn’t trust them with their own grandmothers.’

‘We do seem to be taking a very circuitous route.’

‘They’re in no hurry to reach our objective. Every time I insist that we start to head northwest they find an excuse after a mile or so to turn back to the northeast. It’s as if they want to lead us somewhere completely different.’

‘Here, for example?’ Vespasian looked up at the rocky hills to his left, and then down to the thick pine forest, which stretched as far as he could see, below them. ‘This is not a place I would choose for a camp, far too enclosed.’

‘My point exactly, but what to do, eh? There’s little more than three hours to sundown, and without the guides we may not find anywhere better, so we’re stuck here. At least there’s plenty of timber, so get the men to it, I want a stockade camp tonight; we’ll act as if we’re in hostile territory.’

Vespasian watched his superior move off down the column. He was seven years older than Vespasian and had served on Poppaeus’ staff for the past three years; before that he had been on the Rhine frontier for a year. Although he too came from a rustic background, his family had had senatorial rank for the past two generations and he behaved with the arrogance of someone born into a privileged life. Being sent back to Italia along with Centurion Faustus, the primus pilus or senior centurion of the IIII Scythica, to pick up the column of recruits, and thus miss the start of the season’s campaigning, had hurt his pride. His subsequent impatience with the smallest of errors or misdemeanours by any of the hapless new recruits had resulted in many a flogging and one execution over the seventy days that they had been on the march. He was, as Magnus had rightly observed, an arsehole, but even Vespasian with his limited experience could see that his military instincts were correct, and he turned to relay his orders.

‘Centurion Faustus!’

‘Sir!’

Centurion Faustus snapped to attention with the rattle of phalerae , metal disc-like decorations worn on a harness over his mail shirt, awarded to him over his twenty-two years of service. The traverse white horsehair plume on his helmet stood as rigid as its owner.

‘Have the men construct a stockade camp, and set a double guard.’

‘Yes, sir! Bucinator, sound “Prepare camp”.’

The signaller raised the four-foot-long bucina to his lips and blew a series of high notes through the thin, bell-ended horn, used for signals within camp. The effect was immediate: the two cohorts of raw legionaries unshouldered their pack-poles and pila and then, guided by the vine canes of the centurions and the shouts of their optiones, the centurions’ seconds in command, were sorted into fatigue parties; some for trench-digging, some for soil-packing and some for stake-cutting. The auxiliary Gallic cavalry turmae from the front and the rear of the column formed up in a defensive screen to protect the men as they worked. Beyond them smaller units of Thessalian light cavalry and foot archers patrolled the surrounding countryside. The camp servants and slaves offloaded the baggage, corralled the animals and levelled the ground, whilst the engineers paced out and marked up the line of the square palisade and the position of each of the two hundred papiliones, eight-man tents, within it.

It took only a few moments for the marching column to convert itself into a hive of industry. Every man fell into his allotted task, with the exception of the dozen Thracian guides who squatted down on their haunches and pulled their undyed woollen cloaks around their shoulders and their strange fox-skin hats over their ears against the cooling mountain air. They watched with sullen eyes, murmuring to one another in their unintelligible tongue, as the camp began to take shape.

By the time the sun had set the exhausted legionaries had started to cook their evening meal within the security of the 360-foot-square camp. Each man had either dug just over four feet of trench, five feet wide and three feet at its deepest, piling the spoil up two feet high on the inside for others to pack down, or they had cut and shaped enough five-foot stakes to cover the same length; and all this after marching sixteen miles over rough ground. They hunched in groups of eight, over smoky fires by their leather tents, complaining about the arduousness of their new military lives. The odour of their stale sweat masked the blander smell of the rough military fare that bubbled in their cooking pots. Not even their daily wine ration could produce any laughter or light-hearted banter.

Vespasian sat outside his tent listening to their grumbling as Magnus boiled up the pork and chickpea stew that was to be their supper. ‘I’ll wager there’s more than a few of them regretting joining the Eagles at the moment,’ he observed, taking a slug of wine.

‘They’ll get used to it,’ Magnus said, chopping wild thyme into the pot. ‘The first ten years are the hardest – after that it slips by.’

‘Did you serve the full twenty-five?’

‘I joined up when I was fifteen and did eleven years with the Legio Quinta Alaudae on the Rhine then transferred to the Urban Cohort; they only have to serve sixteen so I was lucky – I was out after a further five. I never made it to optio, though; mainly because I can’t write, although regularly getting busted for fighting didn’t help either. When I was discharged four years ago, it seemed sensible to make a virtue out of a vice so I became a boxer. The money’s better, but it tends to hurt more.’ He rubbed one of his cauliflower ears to emphasise the point. ‘Anyway, these whippersnappers are only moaning because it’s the first time they’ve had to build a full camp after a day’s march; they’ll get used to it after a season in the field. If they survive, that is.’

Vespasian conceded the point; since they had joined the column, late, ten miles outside Genua, they had covered twenty miles a day along proper roads within the safety of Italia, pitching camp wherever they pleased until they had reached the port of Ravenna. From there, after a long wait for the transport ships, they had crossed the Adriatic Sea and sailed down past Dalmatia to Dyrrachium, on the west coast of the province of Macedonia. Here they picked up the Via Egnatia and marched across Macedonia, only ever setting pickets around their camps. This was the first night that they could be said to be in some sort of danger. The men, many of them no older than him, would soon learn that it was better to be tired and safe in a camp than fresh and dead in an open field.

He turned his mind back to the day that he and Magnus had joined the column. Marius and Sextus had put them ashore, with their horses, just west of Genua, and then, before making their way back to Rome, had sailed the small ship into the harbour, under cover of night, to abandon it to be reclaimed some day by its rightful owner. He and Magnus had ridden across country to within a mile of the recruiting depot outside the town’s walls. There they had waited for two days in the overlooking hills for the column’s departure. They had shadowed it along the Via Aemelia Scauri until they were sure that there were no Praetorians travelling with it, and then had caught up with it as if they had just come from Genua. The bollocking that he had received from Corbulo for his late arrival had been excruciating. However, it didn’t overshadow the relief that he had felt at being safely on his way out of Italia and, hopefully, out of the reach of Sejanus and his henchmen.

Vespasian sighed and contemplated the irony that the further he got from someone who would kill him the further he would be from someone who would love him. He fingered the good-luck charm around his neck that Caenis had given him as they had said goodbye and recalled her beautiful face and intoxicating scent. Magnus brought him out of his reverie.

‘Get this down you, sir,’ he said, handing him a bowl of steaming stew. It smelt delicious and, realising just how hungry he was, Vespasian started to eat with relish.

‘How did you learn to cook so well?’

‘If you haven’t got a woman to cook for you then you need to learn, otherwise you end up living on shit.’ Magnus shovelled in a mouthful with his wooden spoon. ‘Most of the young lads here will be half-decent cooks by the time they finish their service. Unless of course they decide to drag a woman around with them; but that’s generally a pain in the arse on campaign, as they tend to moan all the time. It’s fine if you’re stationed in a permanent camp where you can build her a nice little shack outside the walls, somewhere where she can have all her creature comforts and where you can go for a bit of afternoon delight, if you take my meaning?’

‘I do indeed,’ Vespasian replied, feeling the need for some delight himself. Any further thoughts in that direction were halted by the sound of a bucina.

‘That’s “All officers to the command tent”, you’d better go, sir. I’ll keep this warm for you.’

Vespasian handed Magnus his bowl and mumbling his thanks trudged wearily off to the commander’s tent, the praetorium, at the centre of the camp, on the Via Principalis, the road that divided the camp into two.

‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ Corbulo said, looking around the gathering. Present, in the dim lamplight, were the Roman prefects of the two auxiliary Gallic cavalry units, twelve centurions, six from each cohort, including Centurion Faustus who, as the most senior centurion, was acting as prefect of the camp. Vespasian and Marcus Cornelius Gallus, the other newly arrived military tribune, made up the rest of the group.

‘I trust that you have eaten well and feel refreshed, because we have a long night ahead of us.’

There was a small murmuring of assent, but most had, like Vespasian, been halfway through their meals when the summons had come.

‘There is a high probability of an attack on the column either tonight or in the course of the next couple of days. Our Caeletaean guides have been less than helpful and we cannot afford to trust them. I have placed them under arrest with orders for their execution should an attack materialise. This means that we have to find our way to Poppaeus’ camp unaided. Neither Centurion Faustus nor I travelled this way last year on our way back to Genua, as we went directly from Moesia before Poppaeus moved his legions into Thracia. I would appreciate anyone with previous experience of Thracia to make themselves known.’

‘Sir!’ One of the centurions from the second cohort stepped forward.

‘Centurion Aetius, you may speak.’

‘Sir! I served with the Fifth Macedonica under Publius Vellaeus five years ago when the Odrysae revolted, the last time we had to sort out a Thracian mess. We came in from Moesia, just as Poppaeus has done, and cut them to pieces outside the walls of Philippopolis. We passed through Bessapara on our way through. I got to know the country quite well as we stayed for nearly a year, mopping up. They’re a nasty, vicious people, although Marcus Fabius, optio of the princeps posterior century of the second cohort, would beg to differ; he had a woman here five years ago, he even speaks the lingo.’

‘Excellent, thank you, Aetius. What would you recommend we do?’

‘Between twenty and thirty miles north of here we should hit the Harpessus River; it’s not too wide but it’s fast flowing at this time of year with snow melt from the mountains, but it’s still just shallow enough to ford. Once we’re across we could follow it east to the Hebrus River; we could then follow that northwest to Philippopolis and on to Bessapara. It’s a longer route, but without trustworthy guides to take us directly there through the mountains it would be safer.’

Corbulo weighed up this information, trying to reconcile arriving later with the possibility of not arriving at all, and liking neither of the outcomes drew the briefing to a close.

‘Thank you, gentlemen. I will make my decision in the morning. In the meantime have your men sleep in shifts, I want half the centuries to be stood to arms throughout the night. As I said, it will be a long night. Good evening.’

‘Thank you, Magnus,’ Vespasian said, taking his still warm bowl of stew and sitting back down.

‘What did the arsehole have to say? A lot of hot air, I suppose.’ Magnus laughed uproariously at his own joke.

‘Well, he actually admitted to not knowing how to get-’ Vespasian was cut off by the sound of weapons clashing and shouts and screams from the direction of main gate on other side of the camp. They grabbed their swords and rushed towards the commotion, weaving through the confusion of two cohorts of nervous raw recruits being formed up, in darkness, in front of their lines by the barking centurions and their optiones. Cooking pots were kicked over and men tripped on tent pegs and guy ropes as the centuries whose turn it had been to rest rushed to get their pila from the neat weapon stacks whilst simultaneously pulling on their helmets and buckling their swords and lorica segmentata – iron-plate armour constructed in strips – that had been discarded for the night.

Next to the gate, which was open and swinging in the wind, a wagonload of animal fodder was on fire. By its light Vespasian could make out half a dozen bodies strewn across on the ground. Corbulo was already there, screaming at a young legionary who was doing his best to stand to attention, despite the blood streaming down his face from a sword cut above his right eye.

‘What the fuck were you doing just letting them through? Why didn’t you block the gate, you useless sack of shit? I’ll have your head for this. What’s your name?’

The legionary opened his mouth and then fainted at his commanding officer’s feet. Corbulo aimed a kick at the unfortunate man’s stomach and instantly regretted it as his sandalled foot connected with iron-plate armour, half shearing off his big toenail.

‘Tribune Vespasian,’ he shouted, resisting with every fibre of his being the urge to grab his injured foot and hop around like some actor in a bad comedy. ‘Secure the gate. I want a century formed up in front of it.’

‘What happened, sir?’

‘Those fox-fucking sons of Gorgons managed to kill their guards, steal some horses and break through the gate, that’s what’s happened. It’s a fucking shambles and I’m going to have the balls off whoever was in charge. Now get that gate shut, and that fire put out.’

Thinking it best not to point out that it was Corbulo who was in charge, Vespasian ran off to do as he’d been ordered, with Magnus in tow, leaving his commanding officer bawling at Tribune Gallus to order the cavalry prefects have their men mount up.

The fire had been extinguished and calm had returned. Both cohorts were formed up in the sixty-foot gaps between the tent lines and the palisade on either side of the camp. Leaving the gate secured shut and a century, under Centurion Faustus, in front of it, Vespasian turned to examine the bodies on the ground. Pulling the corpse of a fresh-faced legionary off his assailant he heard a low intake of breath.

‘Sir, over here!’

‘Well, what is it?’ Corbulo growled. He had more or less recovered his composure.

‘This Thracian is still alive.’ Vespasian turned over the foulsmelling body of one of their erstwhile guides. Blood seeped from a deep wound on his left shoulder that had almost severed his arm but he was still breathing.

‘Now, that is the first bit of good news I’ve had today.’

Tribune Marcus Gallus came puffing back to report. ‘Sir, they’re saddling up as fast as they can.’

‘They’d better be. I want those cocksuckers caught.’

‘They’ll be well away by now,’ Vespasian said, ‘and they know the terrain, there’s not a hope in Hades of catching them.’

Corbulo looked at Vespasian as if he was about to explode at the impertinence of this stocky little upstart, then pulled himself together as the truth of the statement sank in.

‘I expect you’re right,’ he conceded bitterly. ‘I’ll just have them patrol around the camp, it would be pointless to put good men, or even Gauls, in harm’s way now, we may well be needing them soon. Now, have this prisoner seen to; I want him well enough for questioning within the hour, and get Optio Fabius to translate.’

Vespasian, Gallus, Optio Fabius and the two guards snapped to attention as Corbulo entered the praetorium. The wounded Thracian lay moaning on the ground, too weak with loss of blood to warrant tying up. His wound had been sealed with pitch and roughly bound so the bleeding had stopped; it would not save his life, but it would buy them enough time to interrogate him.

‘Fabius, ask him where they were running off to,’ Corbulo ordered, ‘and whether there are any more of them tracking us out in the hills.’

The optio knelt down next to the prisoner and said a few short sentences in the oddly singsong language of the Thracians.

The prisoner opened his eyes, seemingly in surprise, looked at Fabius for a moment as if registering who he was, and then spat directly into his face.

‘Urgh! You filthy bastard!’ Fabius punched the man on the mouth, splitting open both his lips.

‘That’s enough, optio, I’ll say when he’s to be hurt,’ Corbulo barked. ‘I want him alive for as long as possible. Now ask him again.’

This time Fabius spoke more forcefully, taking care to keep out of spitting range. The Thracian stayed quiet; a grim smile formed on this swollen, bloody mouth and he turned his head away.

Vespasian could see the futility of the exercise; the man knew he was going to die and therefore had nothing to gain by talking; in fact, the more he resisted the higher the likelihood was of his tormentors losing their patience and putting him out of his misery.

‘I’m getting fed up with this,’ Corbulo hissed, placing his left foot on the man’s wounded shoulder. ‘Now, then, you little cunt, talk to me.’ He pressed down hard on the freshly sealed wound. The prisoner let out a guttural scream and blood started to seep through the dressing. ‘Well, you filthy savage, where the fuck were you off to?’

The Thracian looked up at the young Roman officer standing over him, his eyes narrowed in hatred, and, lifting his head, shouted loudly and bitterly at him in his strange tongue. After a few sentences the effort proved too much for the man’s heart and, with a strangled gasp, his head fell back to stare with lifeless eyes at the seething Corbulo.

‘Shit! Well, Fabius, what did he say?’ Corbulo growled.

‘I don’t rightly know, sir,’ the confused-looking optio replied.

‘What do you mean you don’t rightly know? You speak that hideous language, do you not?’

‘I do, sir, but I speak the language of the Odrysae and the Bessi and the other tribes of the north and west.’

‘Well, this man is from the Caeletae. Isn’t that the same?’

‘That’s just it, sir, it is, with just a few differences, but this man was speaking in a dialect that I have never heard before.’

‘But it stated in my orders that our guides were from the Caeletae. If you’re sure he isn’t then where are our real guides and where does he come from?’

‘My guess is that he comes from the eastern part of the country, beyond the Hebrus River.’

‘Impossible, the tribes in the east are loyal to Rome,’ Corbulo spluttered.

‘They were when you left, sir,’ Vespasian said quietly, ‘but what if that is not still the case?’

Corbulo’s face sank as he digested the implications of this possibility. ‘That would mean that we could have one or more of the tribes across the river in rebellion, and if we move east to the Hebrus we risk marching right into them, and if we go northwest we’ll have them on our heels.’

‘Exactly,’ Vespasian said with a grim smile, ‘and to withdraw back to Macedonia would be to directly disobey our orders. I think that the decision has been made for you, sir.’

Corbulo looked at his new tribune and realised that he was right: they had no choice but to press on directly to Poppaeus’ camp in the northwest, without guides; and all the while they would be looking over their shoulders hoping not to see the dust of a Thracian war band approaching their unblooded new recruits from the rear.

‘Oh, shit,’ he whispered.