Enemy of Rome (25 page)

He came back within a few moments. ‘Tiberius Mansuetas of the second century Third cohort.’ The young man hesitated. ‘The dead legionary is his father. He was with Twenty-first Rapax.’

For a moment Valerius felt as if all the horrors of all his battles were bearing down on him in a tidal wave of darkness. Bile welled up in his throat and he had to spit the foulness out. The philosophers spoke of civil war being brother against brother and father against son, but how many had experienced its indescribable reality? ‘Tell his centurion the boy is to fall out and do his duty to his father. He will re-join us when he is done.’

Before the soldier had returned, Primus’s advancing legions cornered the retreating Fifteenth against its own baggage train as soldiers and camp followers fought for a place on the road to Cremona. Two casts of the javelin turned the retreat into a rout. Valerius saw that all along the line the Vitellian soldiers were making their way back to the sanctuary of the city by any means they could, utterly leaderless and all discipline gone.

Vipstanus Messalla, commander of Galbiana’s sister legion the Seventh Claudia, rode over from his position on the left. He greeted Valerius without ceremony. ‘It’s like herding sheep,’ he said. ‘Primus should order a general advance and we’d slaughter them before they got anywhere near the city. Once they’re in their camp it’ll be a different story.’

‘He wants to maintain the line,’ Valerius pointed out, ‘so they don’t have the opportunity to counter-attack. Maybe this is the end?’

‘No.’ The veteran tribune shook his head, his face grim. ‘They’ll fight, and it’ll be all the bloodier when they’re behind walls and we’re not.’

Not far away the Thirteenth’s advance guard toppled the charred remains of the great catapult into the ditch to allow free passage for the centuries that followed. The blackened skeleton lay on its side, partially intact, and the two men went to inspect the burned timbers.

‘This could have been the difference,’ Messalla said. ‘You did well to burn it.’

‘I hope so.’ Valerius attempted to disguise the break in his voice. ‘It was an expensive victory.’

Patches of drying blood stained the gravel where the catapult had been pegged. Valerius looked for the bodies of the men who had defended the machine or those who sacrificed so much to destroy it, but could see no sign. Messalla made his farewells and rode off towards his legion. Left alone with his personal guard, Valerius allowed his mount to make its own way through the scattered debris and wrecked tents of a Vitellian camp beside the road. The horse shied nervously as they approached a cloth pavilion that had been left more or less untouched. It was only when Valerius dismounted and looked inside that he understood why. A hospital tent, a temporary
valetudinarium
, and the
medici
who served it had either fled or been slaughtered as they worked, along with the wounded in their care. His nose wrinkled at the scent of freshly shed blood in the confined space. Some morbid fascination took him to inspect the rear of the tent and he felt a stab of pain in the stump of his right arm when he recognized the pile of amputated limbs. Beyond the severed arms and legs a large hole had been dug in the damp earth, perhaps fifteen paces across. Valerius warily approached it, knowing what he would find, but steeling himself to look anyway. The death pit.

The butchered lay where they’d been thrown, stripped of all clothing, possessions and dignity, piled haphazardly this way and that, their faces in repose or in the rictus of agony, depending on the method of their passing. These were the men who had been wounded on the field and were felt capable of recovery. Once they’d reached the
medicus
they’d either died in any case, or succumbed under his instruments. Valerius was used to death, had seen it in many forms and more often than he liked. However, this casual discarding of what a few hours earlier had been living, breathing human beings always disturbed him. His heart fluttered as he searched for a familiar face among the top layers – and froze. The man might have been sleeping, but for the fact that his eyes were half shut and would never see again. His only consolation was that despite the awfulness of the wound in his abdomen, it appeared the suffering of Annius Cluvius Celer had been over long before he died. Valerius sent up a prayer to Jupiter for Celer’s onward passage to the Otherworld and vowed to make a sacrifice in his memory, and that of … He turned away, sickened. He’d had his fill of death.

He’d walked five paces when at the very edge of his consciousness he registered a conversation between his guards. ‘Look, it’s moving.’ The words were Milo’s, reliable and never jumpy, but now patently shaken by what he saw.

‘Maggots,’ came the dismissive reply from Julius, the decurion. ‘You always get maggots in a pit, stands to reason. All those flies.’

‘No,’ Milo insisted. ‘It’s moving. Fuck …’

Valerius only reacted when he heard the whispered song of a sword clearing its scabbard. He spun, reaching for the
gladius
on his right hip. And froze. The sight that confronted him sent a spear point of superstitious dread down his spine and he almost cried out. A bloodied arm reached up from between a pair of corpses. A scarlet dome of a head broke from the surface of the pit, as if Hades was giving birth to some single-headed spawn of Cerberus. For a moment, the head stayed motionless as if considering its new surroundings, then it shook and growled like a dog, snorted to catch its first breath and let out an enormous roar that transformed the dog into a lion.

Julius stood by the edge of the pit, his face white as parchment and his sword raised. Milo had a
pilum
in his big fist ready to throw.

‘No!’ Valerius cannoned into the legionary just as the javelin left his hand, flying wide to impale a body less than a foot from its target, who had somehow managed to force himself waist high in the sea of bodies. The would-be corpse’s eyes bulged like duck eggs in the gore-stained mask of his face and his body shook with fury. ‘If that fornicating spear had found its mark, Roman, my shade would have haunted your dreams for all eternity and a bit fucking longer. As it is, I will be your living nightmare unless you help me out of this offal.’

The threat was directed at Milo and the man in the pit blinked as he noticed Valerius for the first time. Bizarrely, he raised his free hand to his chest in salute. ‘Serpentius of Avala, headquarters section of the Seventh, reporting for duty, tribune.’

Valerius wondered that he didn’t die of shock. ‘Don’t just stand there gaping like idiots, get something to pull him out.’ He ran to the edge of the pit, grinning like a moonstruck schoolboy, his heart soaring at the sight of the bloodied figure. He shook his head. ‘What kind of fool spends the night in a mass grave?’

Serpentius struggled to suppress a grin of his own. ‘The kind of fool who volunteers for a suicide mission and gets his skinny Spanish arse trapped behind enemy lines with the promise of a spear up it if he’s caught.’ He snorted and spat a gob of something red. ‘When I first went in I was only under one body, but they kept putting more of the bastards on top and I could barely move. I thought I might not get out before they got round to filling the pit in.’

Valerius shuddered at the image. But he had to ask. ‘What was it like?’

‘Cold,’ the Spaniard admitted. ‘But sometimes the company of the dead is preferable to the company of the living.’

They caught up with the leading elements of the Seventh Galbiana three miles from Cremona. The terrain became more accommodating the closer they came to the city, and the men of the Seventh marched over firm ground to avoid the chaos on the road. Wreckage from enemy baggage trains, abandoned weapons and the discarded belongings of camp followers obstructed the causeway. Valerius noticed a new spirit of confidence in his legionaries. Already exhilarated by the fumes of what had seemed an unlikely victory, the sight of their foes’ retreating backs gave new energy to weary legs. They knew they’d achieved something remarkable and they sensed that one last effort would bring them ultimate victory and never to be forgotten glory. They were eager to finish the job.

Marcus Antonius Primus halted his army just short of the city. In the commander’s headquarters tent Valerius struggled to keep his eyes open as the other legates gathered. For him, battle had always been a place where danger and proximity to death seemed to multiply the living essence. Sometimes when he fought, Valerius swore he could have called Mars kin, but he had a feeling this battle had taken a toll like no other; a diminishing of self as if an inner fire was dying. Primus was as tired as any of his soldiers, the very flesh seeming to hang wearily from the bones of his face. Yet despite days in the saddle, the general’s eyes radiated a messianic zeal that no amount of exhaustion could extinguish.

‘Our scouts report the enemy has strengthened his defences immeasurably in the past few weeks.’ Primus addressed the legates of his five legions around a hastily fashioned sand table modelled to produce a crude likeness of Cremona and its surroundings. ‘They have expanded the ring of camps around the city, added lines of palisades and ditches here, here and here,’ he leaned across and pointed to a series of scores to the east of the city, ‘and filled them with the usual horrors. Sixteen towers dominate the most vulnerable stretches, armed alternately with
scorpiones
and
onagri
, and sited to provide crossing fire. We will undoubtedly face heavy catapults of the kind the Seventh’ – Valerius acknowledged his bow – ‘dealt with so efficiently, but they will be more difficult to reach.’ For a moment the general’s voice faltered and he looked to each of the men in the tent as if trying to draw strength from them. Eventually, he shook his head and found the will to continue. ‘Altogether a formidable obstacle, gentlemen. True, these entrenchments will be filled by legions who have been thinned by our efforts, but they will fight, and it is clear we must oblige them. The question is how?’

‘My men are exhausted.’ Every eye turned to Numisius Lupus, commander of Eighth Augusta. ‘I do not say that they cannot fight,’ he explained hastily. ‘They see their enemy and itch to be at him so I must struggle to control their enthusiasm.’ His words were greeted with a murmur of accord from commanders who had experienced the same eagerness. ‘My doubt is whether they have the strength, or the will, to entrench a camp of our own, and create suitable defences against an enemy capable of sortieing from Cremona to destroy us while we dig.’

‘You think we should besiege the city?’ Primus asked quietly.

Lupus’s eyes showed consternation. ‘Do we have any other choice?’

‘Certainly we have choices,’ Vedius Aquila interjected impatiently, ‘unpalatable though they be. We could withdraw to Bedriacum and recover our strength while we await reinforcements from Syria.’

‘And throw away everything we have won?’ Primus’s tone was mild enough, but the Thirteenth’s legate bridled defensively at the implication of defeatism.

‘I am speaking hypothetically, of course,’ he growled. ‘A mere listing of the options. But what is the alternative to siege or withdrawal? It would be folly to attack Cremona with exhausted troops. We would need every man to assault these walls, with not even a few thousand ragged Praetorians in reserve.’

‘Folly perhaps,’ Primus conceded. ‘But I believe it is our
only
option.’

The tent went very still, and Valerius was reminded of the depthless silence of an African night.

Primus turned to him. ‘You think me impulsive, Gaius Valerius Verrens? No,’ he raised a hand, ‘do not deny it.’ A smile flickered on his thin lips. ‘It is true that my impetuousness has brought us here, to the brink of victory or defeat, depending on your point of view. But my belief is based not on
my
desire to close with the enemy, but on the facts as I see them.’ He frowned and bowed his head as if he were considering those facts; lining them up, then repositioning them like a carpenter contemplating the best way to approach a complex piece of work. Eventually, he had them where he wanted them and he looked up to meet his subordinates’ doubting eyes. ‘Time is running short, but I will outline my reasoning. We cannot starve the defenders without starving ourselves. Our foraging parties range far and wide between the mountains and the sea and still return empty-handed, because our enemy has prudently stripped the countryside to provision the city. To eat, we must first fight. You say your soldiers are exhausted, Numisius? I agree. They are approaching the very limits of their endurance. Yet their howls for the blood of the Vitellians remain undiminished. My question is not can we fight but can we afford
not
to fight? It is they – our soldiers – even more than I, who have driven us here. It is you, the legates of my legions, who have lost control of them. If I ordered these men to return to Bedriacum they would like as not cry “traitor” and kill me, and you too, Aquila.’ He shook his head. ‘It would be folly to attack at these odds? No, it would be folly to waste their precious energy digging ditches. They have one last fight in them. We must make the best use of it. My message to your soldiers is this: you are hungry? Cremona is our granary. Take Cremona and you will eat your fill – aye, and a surfeit of loot and women too. You are sick of civil war? Then finish it. Here and now. One cast of the dice. One final effort. For Rome and Vespasian.’

‘For Rome and Vespasian!’ The four legates echoed his words and Valerius was astonished at the change Primus had wrought since they entered the tent. Then, they had looked like defeated men despite their recent victory, cowed by the odds facing them and the seemingly insurmountable logistical problems that plagued their legions. Yet in one brief piece of genius their commander had negated their concerns. The facts remained unchanged, but the situation was entirely different. He had shown them that only a single course of action was open to them. The decision was no longer theirs. The men wanted to be at their enemy and nothing would change their minds. If they wanted to fight they must be given their wish.