The Dog and the Wolf (58 page)

The dispersal was rotten military practice, but hardly any of the men were real soldiers, all were bone-tired, and nothing would attack them during the night. Guards stood posted around a shadowiness which was the gathered Armorican dead, awaiting burial in the morning before the living turned home.

Salomon, Cadoc, Drusus, and several more from their area sat around one fire. Bomatin Kusuri was missing; he lay in yonder ring of spears. Cadoc’s left hand was wrapped, the little finger lost after his shield got knocked from his grasp, but it hadn’t bled too badly and he remained alert in a glassy-eyed fashion. Salomon wore a dressing on his right forearm, over a minor cut—nothing worse, though he had ramped among the enemy till his mount was disabled and his standard bearer pierced, then taken to the ground and continued hewing while the banner swayed and fluttered in his grasp.

Exuberance left no room in him for fatigue. He gesticulated wildly. “I tell you, their baggage is cram full of gold and silver and gems!” he gloated. “Every man of ours can bring back a good year’s pay, and we’ll have a hoard left over for the public treasury.”

“Think of those from whom it was robbed, in churches and storehouses and homes,” Cadoc mumbled.

Salomon bit his lip, a brief gleam of teeth in the wavering ruddy light. “Oh, true, but done is done, we can’t ever find the rightful owners if they’re even alive, and this gives our men a share of the victory, solid in their hands.”

“It’ll help morale, sure,” grunted Drusus. “What’ll help more is the armor and weapons we collected. Next time we won’t take near the casualties we did here.”

Cadoc covered his face. “Christ have mercy, shall there
be a next time?” Quickly, he looked up. “Understand, I’ll be there. What were our losses?”

Gratillonius trod out of the dusk. “I’ve been going the rounds getting information about that,” he said. His voice was hoarse and without timbre. “About three hundred dead or seriously hurt.’ He sat down, crossed his legs, held his palms toward the fire. Like the rest, he wore leather breeches that wouldn’t take up too much wet or cold before he rolled into his cloak for the night. “Bad. Under normal conditions, Pyrrhic. But no worse than I expected, frankly. And we gave so much better than we got that I don’t think many among us have lost heart, if any have. Instead, most ought to have learned the lesson.”

“What lesson, Gradlon?” asked Salomon. He and Verania were slipping into the Armorican usage for his name; it made a Kind of endearment.

“The need for better organization, training, and discipline. We only prevailed today because we had some of that, together with terrain and other circumstances favorable for the tactics I picked. At the same time, our men have now been blooded, and taken it well, and that means a great deal. It works both ways, naturally. I, our officers, we’ve gotten a lot to mull over, about how to handle an army of this kind. And it’ll be our responsibility to build the organization and do the teaching.”

“We’ll never build a legion, though,” Drusus said.

“No.” Gratillonius sighed. “The time for that is past. We don’t live in the same world any more.”

“I understand, sir. Just the same, it’s too bad we can’t hold—oh, not a triumph for you, I suppose, but at least a parade. Come home together, in formation, standards high, before the women and kids and everybody. That always did wonders for our spirits … in the old days.”

Gratillonius smiled, a wolfish withdrawal of lips from teeth. “As a matter of fact, I mean to offer a fair-sized body of picked men exactly that chance to show themselves off. You’re invited.”

They stared. “What, sir?” asked Drusus.

“They’ll follow me when I report to the authorities in Turonum.”

4

No Roman could be sure why the barbarians did as they did. Perhaps they themselves did not know, perhaps they were more a natural force than a human thing, their impulses as blind as a storm.

They sacked Durocotorum and Samarobriva. That was as far west as the bulk of them got. From there they lumbered northeast, laying waste Nemetacum and Turnacum, with the hinterlands of those cities. That entire corner of Gallia was a desolation.

They had stripped and burnt it bare. It could no longer support them, nor anyone else. But why did they not bear southwest, till they found the rich valley of the Liger and raged down it to the sea? Had something that way given them pause?

Rome knew only that from Turnacum the horde moved almost due south toward Aquitania.

5

They were three who sat behind a long table in a room of the basilica: the Duke of the Armorican Tract, the governor of Lugdunensis Tertia, and his procurator. Gratillonius stood before them, alone. None desired witnesses to this meeting. That would have made impossible the saying of certain things.

The room was still for a while. Outside, the wind wuthered across brown fields and piped between city walls. Clouds scudded. Earth drank warmth from the sun, and snowdrops blossomed under newly budding willows.

Flaminius Murena, the Duke, cleared his throat. He was a large man, as Gallic in his blood as Gratillonius was Britannic, but from the darker tribes of the South. Like Bacca, he wore a robe. Glabrio affected a toga. Gratillonius was in his riding clothes.

“So,” Murena said, “you raised your own army after all. Now you’ve come here with an armed force capable of overwhelming our garrison. Are you about to reach for the purple?”

“No, sir,” Gratillonius replied levelly, “I am not.”

Glabrio showed purple himself, on his jowls. “It isn’t even a proper military unit,” he fumed. “A rabble, a rabble in arms!”

Bacca’s tone remained soft. “This is the most alarming prospect,” he said. “Gratianus in Britannia could conceivably turn into another Constantinus. But you have raised the Bacaudae against Rome.”

“I have not,’ Gratillonius said, “and my followers are nothing of the sort. They are decent, hard-working, ordinary folk who ask nothing except to be left in peace.” Never mind what leather-clad woodsmen and shaggy tribesmen slouched about among those fighters who occuied the streets of Turonum and, without making it totally blatant, surrounded the basilica. “The Germani wouldn’t give them that; and the Romans couldn’t stop the Germani … by themselves.” To Murena: “Sir, what we did was save this military district of yours for you.”

“And what do you mean to do next?” the Duke demanded.

Gratillonius shrugged. “Go back to our everyday lives. Stand by to come to your side again whenever need be, No, I have no intention of rebelling. Let Gratianus cross over from Britannia and he’ll have us to deal with.”

Bacca stroked his chin. “Since you have such respect for the law and our Emperor,” he purred, “it’s curious how you kept his ministers waiting this long until you condescended to visit them.”

Glabrio: “Outrageous. Repeated refusals to obey my summons. Unheard of.”

Gratillonius: “My replies explained the reasons, over and over. First we had to go home, care for the injured, let our men pick their lives back up. Then it was time to start working the farms. It still is. I have my own, as well as everything that’s had to be postponed in my tribuneship.”

Glabrio: “Tribuneship! You arrive with that pack of bandits and dare call yourself an officer of the state?”

Gratillonius: “I did it for your sakes, sirs.”

Glabrio:
“What?
”

Murena: “Easy, Glabrio. Say on, Gratillonius.”

Gratillonius: “If anything untoward should happen to me, that would be unfortunate. It could well unleash the selfsame revolt you fear. I thought that bringing a bodyguard was a sensible precaution.’

Bacca: “Against hotheads?”

Gratillonius: “I’m sure the procurator is not among them.”

Bacca: “What do you propose?”

Gratillonius: “I told you, I’ll go quietly home and take up my work and my public duties.” Slowly: “But the men who saved Armorica—all of them, everywhere, serfs, reservists, everybody, they must have amnesty. No harm shall come to a single soul of them. Otherwise I can’t answer for the consequences.”

Bacca: “I daresay you’d quickly learn about any … incidents.”

Gratillonius:
“They
will. The brotherhoods.”

Murena: “You refuse to disband them, then?”

Gratillonius: “Sir, I couldn’t. Men are flocking to join. Isn’t the only sensible thing to allow this, encourage it, help improve it, and so keep it at the service of Rome?”

Murena: “Under you.”

Gratillonius: “I offer my counsel.”

Bacca: “You mean your good offices.”

Glabrio: “Offices? Impossible! Absurd! Your commission was revoked the moment I learned of your deeds.”

Gratillonius: “That’s in the governor’s power, but please remember that my petition is on its way to the Emperor. Not for myself, but for the people of Armorica, asking for a rescript granting us the right to defend ourselves. Meanwhile, if the governor chooses to replace me as tribune, I’ll cooperate with the new man to the best of my ability.”

Murena: “Ha! Glabrio, don’t waste anybody on that nest of vipers.”

Gratillonius: “If we have to govern ourselves in Aquilo and Confluentes, we will. We’ll maintain law and order. The taxes will be paid on schedule.”

Glabrio: “And when your petition is denied, when the order comes from Ravenna for your arrest and execution, what then?”

Gratillonius: “I’m not sure that it will, sir. Lord Stilicho may well advise his Imperial Majesty that what we have in Armorica is the foundation of a Roman fortress.”

Bacca: “If he does that, then, bluntly put, he’s a fool who can’t see past the end of his Vandal snout. The precedent—”

Gratillonius: “Times change, sir.”

Bacca: “And Stilicho … is given to improvising.”

There was another silence. The wind blustered.

At length Murena asked, “Has anyone anything else to say?” Throttled fury trembled in the words.

“Just putting our agreement in plain language that none of us can forget or misunderstand,” Gratillonius answered.

“Because it can’t very well be recorded, can it? We must connive with you at gross illegality to avoid what is worse.” The smile on Bacca’s lips was a grimace as of a man in great pain. “You’re right, times do change. A strong Emperor with some sense of statecraft—But let us get on with our distasteful business.”

“Then I’ll go home,” said Gratillonius.

6

“Hail, Caesar!” boomed the deep young voices.

From the towertop where he stood, Constantinus saw widely over those domains that were his. The river sheened beneath soft heaven and brilliant sun. On its opposite bank reached the roofs of the civilian city, red tile, neat thatch, and beyond them a landscape of hills and vales grown vividly green, white where fruit trees and hawthorn blossomed, the breeze from it laden with odors of earth and flower. So had the springtime been five years ago, at Deva on the far side of Britannia, that day when he turned back the mighty barbarian Niall.

“Hail, Caesar!”

His gaze dropped between the walls of the fortress. So had they stood for centuries. Here had come the Emperor Hadrianus, who built the Wall; here had died the Emperors Severus and Constantinus; here the legions had pro
claimed that man’s son, another Constantinus, their Augustus, he who first conquered in the sign of Christ. This countryside had prospered peaceful throughout the wars that tore the Empire, lifetime after lifetime, because Eboracum abided as the home of the Sixth Victrix. Strange to think that he, Flavius Claudius Constantinus, would end its long watch.

“Hail, Caesar!”

The cry was antiquated. Caesar had come to mean simply the Imperial associate and heir apparent. The troops were making him supreme Augustus. They would march and sail and march at his beck to enforce it—-or, if he failed to lead them, kill him and name another. Below, at the front of the armored men massed and shouting, the head of Gratianus gaped on a spear.

Constantinus lifted an arm. Across the shoulders of his own mail he had thrown a purple cloak. His brows bore a laurel wreath. Swords drawn, his elder son Constans stood proud on his right, his younger son Julianus on his left.

Stillness fell, till he heard the murmur of the breeze and a lark song on high. Faces and faces and faces stared upward. Sunlight gleamed on their eagles. Elsewhere in the world, horsemen had become lords of the battlefield. Only in Britannia did something remain of that unbreakable fighting machine which had carried the power of Rome from Caledonia to Egypt. Oh, the machine had corroded, he’d need plenty of cavalry himself, but the Sixth and Second, the Britannic infantry, set down in Gallic soil, would be the dragon’s teeth from which his armies grew.

He filled his lungs. When he spoke, it rolled forth over the ranks. He’d learned how to do that, as common soldier, centurion, senior centurion. Thence he went to camp prefect, but that was a short service. Already the troops were ill pleased with Gratianus, who was doing nothing, like Marcus before him. Constantinus had known how to steer that discontent….

“Hail, my legionaries! Great beyond all measure is this honor you have done me. Next after God, I thank you for it. Under Him, I will prove myself worthy of it.

“You are soldiers. I am a soldier, one among you. I too have marched and fought, endured rain and snow, hunger and weariness and the loss of dear comrades. I too have eaten bitterness as barbarians pillaged and burned along our shores, killed our men, ravished our women, dashed the brains of our little children out against walls that our forefathers raised. And Britannia is not alone in her wretchedness. Again and again, Goths break into the Southern lands, even into Italy. How long till Rome herself burns? And now the Germani spill across Gallia, right there over the narrow sea. And a weakling Emperor with a witling councillor lies idle.

“The time is overpast for action. Rome needs a strong man, a fighting man, an Emperor who sits less on the throne than in the saddle. If God will give us such leadership, we shall yet prevail. We will crush the heathen; but first we will crush the fools and traitors who let them in.

“This I promise you. I promise it by Christ Jesus, Our Lord and Saviour. I promise it by my great namesake Constantinus, whom your forebears hailed within this very stronghold, and who went forth to restore the Empire and establish the Faith. I promise it by my kinsman Magnus Maximus, who likewise went from here to redeem; he fell, but his spirit lives on, immortal. By my own soul and hope of salvation, I promise you victory!”