Enemy of Rome (24 page)

Roaring the ancient war cry of his tribe the former gladiator leapt from the catapult, whirling the axe. A man sprinted towards him with a bucket in his hand and no regard for his own safety. Serpentius repaid his bravery by sinking the axe head in his belly. As his victim shuddered with the awful effects of the blow the Spaniard hauled at the weapon and cursed as he realized it was beyond recovery. Danger was everywhere. Someone ran past screaming but Serpentius never discovered whether he was friend or foe. The respite gave him time to draw his long sword and he turned to face the next attack. It was a heavy weapon, designed for mounted troops, with a lethal double edge that cavalrymen used to bludgeon their enemies into oblivion. On foot, few men had the skill to use it effectively. Serpentius was one. The former gladiator who had survived a hundred fights. Master of his trade, and a born killer.

As he fought, he screamed his defiance and contempt for the cowards who faced him. But another part of his mind knew time was running out. So far the opposition had been piecemeal, disorganized; a few men at a time rushing out of the darkness. Suddenly, above the cries of the maimed and the dying, came the familiar sound of iron-shod feet, and they were coming at the run.

A hand touched his shoulder and he dispatched another man and turned with a snarl.

‘You must get him away,’ Crispinus shouted. ‘The prefect. You must get him away.’

Serpentius looked from the hunched figure of Clovius Celer to the darkened road where perhaps three or four hundred men were advancing at the trot.

‘We will buy you time,’ the militia man assured him. The mud- and soot-stained face shone with pride. ‘Your job is done. Save the prefect.’ Beyond Crispinus, Lucca nodded, and Serpentius saw the resolve mirrored in the eyes of the dozen survivors of Celer’s band of veterans. Emotion was unfamiliar to Serpentius of Avala, unless that emotion was hatred, but for a moment he found his vision clouded.

‘I will take him, but hear me: you will be remembered. Wherever soldiers gather they will talk of the deeds of the Ateste cohort of the
evocati
.’ With a last nod he shouldered Celer to his feet and half carried, half dragged him away into the relative sanctuary of the darkness.

When he was a hundred paces from the road, he lowered the prefect to the ground and felt the man’s body shudder as waves of pain racked him. With practised fingers Serpentius checked for the rent in the chain armour. He grimaced at what he found. A stomach wound, and the familiar stink told him the bowels had been torn. A death wound. He reached for the knife at his belt. Better to …

‘You must leave me,’ Celer groaned. ‘No point in us both dying. Leave me and get back to Valerius where you belong.’

The Spaniard slipped the knife back into its leather sheath. ‘I said I’d stay with you.’

‘Pah.’ It was almost a laugh. ‘What good …’

Serpentius placed a hand over the old man’s mouth. On the causeway the last of Clovius Celer’s men were dead or dying. The Vitellians would be spreading out from the road looking for anyone who had escaped the massacre. He could hear the sound of men shouting encouragement to each other in the darkness.

Celer stifled a cry as Serpentius heaved him on to his back and stumbled further away from the road. After a moment, the Spaniard paused, and coming to a decision turned west, deeper into enemy territory. When he judged they were safe, he sat with the militia commander and listened to his spirit fade. At first Celer was lucid, talking of his farm on the plain outside Ateste, the son he’d raised and the rich dark earth and vines that grew as if at his command. But gradually his mind returned him to the rocky highlands of Armenia and the days when he had followed a general he had revered as a god.

‘He should have been Emperor, you know.’

Serpentius blinked, because for the first time in an hour the voice sounded rational, but they were the last words Clovius Celer uttered. As the first faint pink glow that heralded dawn appeared in the eastern sky Serpentius sensed he was alone. He sat for a while considering his options, most of which seemed to end up lying in a cold grave. Eventually, he nodded to himself. One chance. Another hour and he would be trapped in the midst of his enemies in broad daylight. He cut a diagonal that would take him beyond any searchers and followed the causeway west until he saw lights and his nose told him he was close. Keeping to the darkness he reached his goal at last. When he was certain he was alone, he stripped off armour, sword belt and tunic …

Valerius only understood he’d survived the longest night of his life when there was enough light to make out the features of the man next to him. Claudius Ferox seemed to have aged ten years. The tribune’s aristocratic features were the colour of whey and the texture of parchment, and the deep lines on his cheeks hadn’t existed when the sun went down. From beneath the rim of his helmet, sunken, red-rimmed eyes studied the plain where the enemy waited. Valerius knew he looked no better. He’d never been so exhausted. Did he last sleep thirty-six hours ago, or was it forty-eight? His stomach screamed for food, but he’d shared the last of his bread with a
contubernalis
from the second cohort hours earlier. He slipped the water skin from the pommel of his leather saddle and handed it to the younger man. Ferox took it eagerly, drawing the tepid liquid through his salt-caked lips until he realized how little remained.

‘My apologies, legate.’ The words emerged almost as a sob as he handed the skin back. Valerius patted him on the shoulder and drank what remained, the barely discernible moisture as welcome as any nectar. He closed his eyes. By the gods, he’d never felt so old. Old enough to be Claudius Ferox’s father.

During that long night the men of Seventh Galbiana had fought their Vitellian opponents to a standstill. They’d stood shoulder to shoulder behind their big shields, rotating in and out of the front rank only when their blood stained the earth or their sword arms tired. Some men stood shield to shield with the enemy seven or eight times in that front line. Many would never leave it, lying in everlasting embrace with the men who died under their swords. While they fought, Valerius walked the lines, handing out food and water and giving quiet encouragement, accompanied by Drusus Rufio and the eagle standard. They repulsed attack after attack and always the enemy kept coming. Yet in the sixth hour of the night, shortly after the catapult missiles stopped falling on the Thirteenth’s positions, Valerius had sensed a weakening of resolve. They still fought. Still howled their hatred and their scorn, but the men of the Fifteenth Primigenia no longer believed they would prevail. When he realized it, he deliberately weakened his centre and placed his strongest cohorts on the flanks. When next they came the centre cohorts fell back, drawing the enemy on, then halted them with a devastating javelin shower. In the same instant he launched the flank attacks that would have destroyed the entire legion had they not retreated for the last time. None fought better than the First cohort. Yet, as he’d walked the lines in the darkness, his mind on the far side of the field where a few brave men were fighting and dying to save Primus’s campaign, Valerius would swear he heard a soft voice.
One thrust and it would be over, my proud peacock. One thrust and the Seventh legion would be under the command of a proper soldier.
At the time he wondered if he had imagined it, but now Brocchus’s face swam into his mind and the sneer on his lips said it was true. Why hadn’t he struck? With Serpentius gone, there would never be a better opportunity. But too many men were aware of the enmity between the legion’s
primus pilus
and his commander. His absence would have been noticed and questions asked. Brocchus might have survived or he might not. Those odds weren’t good enough for a man like him.

Valerius remembered the flames consuming the enemy’s catapult and exulting in Serpentius’s success. But, as the hours passed, the certainty grew that it had been bought at a terrible price. One part of him said he should have ignored the Spaniard’s words and gone himself, though he knew that would only have meant sacrificing the one for the other. Perhaps he should have let the Thirteenth deal with their own problems. Could he have sent Celer and his men without the gladiator? He knew he would have been sacrificing them for no purpose. Of course, with a man like Serpentius there was always hope, but … He shivered and wrapped his cloak tighter about him. At Colonia he’d lost his right hand, but in the grey, doom-filled light of this blood-soaked dawn it felt as if he had been robbed of something much more important.

A little later he noticed movement on the right where the three Praetorian cohorts had filled the gap left by the Thirteenth’s auxiliaries. Marcus Antonius Primus, in gleaming armour and sitting tall on a black stallion, rode into their ranks with an escort of twenty cavalry. The guards formed square and fleetingly Valerius heard the sound of shouted words on the wind, followed by a muted cheer.

‘Take one man in every three out of the line and have them prepare to receive the commander,’ he ordered Ferox. ‘And make sure they know to enjoy his speech.’

‘Perhaps if it was accompanied by some breakfast.’ The tribune smiled wearily.

‘And keep them on the alert, Claudius. It would be embarrassing if the general was killed during a visit to the Seventh Galbiana. History would never forgive us.’

By the time Primus approached, the legionaries had already formed a three-sided square to receive him. Valerius advanced to greet the general, who returned his salute with a tired smile. The one-handed Roman remarked inwardly how like Otho the man was; difficult to really know, but hard not to like.

‘Your men did well last night,’ Primus said quietly. ‘They – and you – have my thanks.’

Valerius bowed in the saddle. ‘They all did.’

The general nodded thoughtfully. ‘Though it was a close-run thing. Whether by accident or design, whoever destroyed the machine that was flaying the Thirteenth tipped the scales in our favour.’ He saw the mixture of pride and sadness on Valerius’s face. ‘Your people?’

‘Annius Cluvius Celer, prefect commanding the Ateste cohort of
evocati
,’ the general’s eyebrows went up as Valerius drew a wax block from his tunic, ‘and nineteen of his men. Serpentius was with them.’

‘The Spaniard?’

Valerius nodded.

‘Then their deeds shall be known and Vespasian will hear of your part in it.’

As the sun rose above the eastern horizon to capture the ranks of the Seventh in a halo of misty gold an enormous roar erupted from the far end of the Flavian line. Immediately cries of ‘Mucianus!’ went up, accompanied by shouts for silence and the rattle of the centurions’ vine sticks against helmet and armour.

Primus smiled. ‘The sun worshippers of Third Gallica,’ he said, referring to the legion that held the right of his line, ‘who some would say spent too long in the East, but it won’t do any harm to let our men think Mucianus is close.’ He kicked his mount forward into the centre of the square. ‘You did well last night, my fiery Spaniards,’ he told them. ‘You held the line, and but for the foot-racing prowess of your opponents you might well have added Victrix to your legion’s title.’ The flattery brought a cheer, as he intended it to. ‘You are tired,’ he continued, ‘as we all are, and hungry, but the enemy is more so. I have one more task for you. Drive them back and take Cremona. Drive them back and win the throne for Titus Flavius Vespasian. Did I hear that my friend General Mucianus and his African legions are close? Are we going to allow these latecomers to take all the glory and the loot?’

‘No!’ the shout went up.

‘Of course not. When your rations come up you will eat your fill and then you will drive the enemy from this field, drive them back on Cremona, where you will destroy them. This is where the war will be won, and the Seventh Galbiana will win it. Destroy them here and all the riches of Cremona will be yours.’

They cheered the general from the field and Valerius escorted him halfway to the Seventh Claudia.

‘You really think they are beaten?’

‘Oh, yes.’ Primus nodded emphatically. ‘They’ve pulled back to draw breath, but we won’t allow them that freedom. They are leaderless. They attacked piecemeal and in poor order when their commander should have concentrated against a single part of the line. If he had done that it might have been this army on the retreat. We will march in battle order and the Thirteenth will be our battering ram. Straight up the road, Valerius. Four miles to Cremona. Four miles to wipe away the stain of the defeat at Bedriacum. Four miles to victory.’

Valerius watched him go and marvelled at the man’s self-assurance. The legions he commanded had marched sixty miles in two days and gone forty-eight hours without sleep. Now he expected more of them? Well, only time would tell. They were still outnumbered, and though Primus’s light artillery had finally caught up with them, the heavy siege artillery needed to take Cremona was still somewhere down the road. But he must put all that to the back of his mind. The Seventh Galbiana and Gaius Valerius Verrens had another battle to fight.

And this time he would have to do it without Serpentius.

Not many battles go exactly to plan, but the final stage of the battle of the Cremona road happened exactly as Primus predicted. Thirteenth Gemina pushed the Vitellian centre before it, causing the enemy legions to north and south to retire in step to preserve their defensive line. In all, Primus’s five worn-out legions faced six full legions and substantial elements of at least four others, but, for the moment at least, it appeared the enemy commanders had lost heart, and their soldiers their taste for a civil war which had its own unique definitions of tragedy.

Valerius advanced his men across a field scattered with the bodies of dead and dying men from the previous night. As they went, the legionaries stooped to strip the dead of what spoils they could. He saw one young man suddenly fall to his knees beside a corpse and heard a wail that voiced more anguish than any sound he’d heard during that terrible night. A centurion immediately began screaming at the legionary and beating him with his stick. ‘Find out what’s happening,’ Valerius ordered an aide.