Betrayal: The Centurions I Read online

  Sabinus’s eyes narrowed and he stared down at the deploying legions and their auxiliary cohorts with fresh insight.

  ‘You’ve ordered the Batavians to attack before the Second moves forward, haven’t you?’

  ‘Once there’s just enough light for them to see what they’re doing, yes. You are indeed about to find out just what my armoured savages are capable of.’

  ‘Centurions! On me!’

  With his cohorts in place as directed, drawn up in their distinctly non-standard formation in the gap between the left flank of the Ninth Legion and the right flank of the Second Augusta, Prefect Gaius Julius Draco waited. His officers converged on his position behind the first row of three centuries, each one drawn up in their usual unorthodox battle formation of three ranks of eight horsemen and sixteen soldiers, with two infantrymen standing on either side of each beast. In the normal run of things he would now have been standing out in front of his men, looking for any signs of fear or weakness, and dealing with any such manifestation in his usual robust manner, but in the pre-dawn murk he had instead positioned himself in the cover of his eight-cohort-strong command, calling his officers together where they could be safe from the risk of a sharp-eyed tribesman spotting the obvious signs of something out of the ordinary. They gathered close about him, their faces fixed in the tense expressions of men who knew that they would shortly be across the river and spilling the blood of the empire’s enemies.

  ‘The Romans would usually be delivering speeches at this point, boasting of their superiority to those barbarians over there …’ His officers grinned back at him, knowing from long experience what was coming. ‘Yes, the same old Draco, eh? You all know what comes next, since it’s the same thing I say before every battle. About how we don’t waste any time telling each other how superior we are to those barbarians over there, because if you strip off all this iron the Romans give us to fight in, we are those barbarians over there.’ He paused, playing a hard stare across their ranks. ‘Only more dangerous. Much more dangerous. We are the Batavi!’

  He allowed a long silence to play out, just as he always did, giving time for his words to sink in and letting the growing legend of their ferocity take muscular possession of each and every one of them as it always did. Knowing that his challenge to them would take the weapon that had been wrought by their Romanisation, their appetite for war made yet more deadly by the addition of the empire’s lavish iron armour and weapons, and would rough-sharpen it back to the ragged edge that was what had attracted Rome to the Batavi and their client tribes in the first place.

  ‘So why do I say the same thing once again, eh?’

  ‘Because this will be just like every other battle we’ve fought for Rome? A bloody-handed slaughter?’

  The speaker was a young man known as Gaius Julius Civilis to the Romans, but named Kivilaz within the tribe, tall, muscular and impatient in both his words and bearing, forever on the verge of fighting, or so it seemed to Draco, who viewed him with the critical eye of a man who knew he might well be looking at his successor as the tribe’s military leader. Loved by his men for his pugnacity and constant urge to compete, Kivilaz was regarded with amused tolerance by the tribe’s older officers and with wary deference by the more junior men among his peer group, who knew only too well that their apparent equality within the tribe’s military tribute to Rome was a polite fiction. Kivilaz was a tribal prince, a man whose line would have been kings with the power of demi-gods a century before, but whose members now occupied more finely nuanced positions within the tribe. Under Roman rule the men of the last king’s line were respected for their blood, and granted membership of the emperor’s extended familia, and while they possessed no more official power than any other man present, now that the tribe’s lands were governed by a magistrate appointed by vote, their effective control of that magistrate’s appointment made them almost as good as kings. Draco cocked a wry eyebrow at the younger man, echoing the smiles of his other officers.

  ‘I say the same thing once again, Centurion, simply because it is true. It’s time for your chance to cut off your hair, if you’ve killed for the tribe when we’ve been across that river and back.’

  He waited for the good-natured laughs at the younger man’s expense to die away, one of Kivilaz’s closer friends nudging him with a grin and reaching out to tug his plaited mane, grown long and dyed red in the tribe’s traditional mark of a man yet to spill an enemy’s blood for his people.

  ‘So the Romans have, as usual, managed to stir up the nest until every single wasp has come out to fight. See them?’

  Draco turned to gesture to the mass of tribal warriors camped on the opposite bank, their positions mainly defined by the glowing sparks of their camp fires.

  ‘There are enough men there to meet any attempt to cross this river and throw it back into the water broken and defeated, leaving the riverbank thick with the corpses of Rome’s legionaries, if the battle goes the way they expect. Except that isn’t going to happen. Because these Britons have no idea who it is they face. They expect no more than that which they have seen from the Romans until now: ordered ranks, tactical caution and a slow, disciplined approach once the sun is high enough to light up the battlefield. They do not, my brothers, expect the Batavi at their throats like a pack of wild dogs in the half-darkness, while most of them are still thinking of their women and stroking their pricks. In time this land will tremble at the mention of our name, but for now we are nothing to them and they do not fear us. They do not guard against us, because they do not know what we are capable of doing to them, and by the time they know that danger it will be too late.’

  He looked around them.

  ‘We attack now, as soon as you’ve had time to ready your men. Tell them that we will cross the river in silence. No shouting, no calling of insults to the enemy, no singing of the paean. They are not to suspect our presence on their side of the water until we’re in among them. Once the first man has an enemy’s blood on his face they can make all the noise they like, but until then I’ll have the back off any man who disobeys this command. And remind them that we’re going across the river to do just one thing, but do it so well that from this day the Britons will shiver whenever they hear our name. It might be distasteful to men like us, but since it has to be done we’ll do it the way we always do, quickly and violently. Like warriors. And now, a prayer before we attack.’

  He beckoned to the man waiting behind him, a senior centurion who was upstanding and erect in his bearing as he stepped forward to address them, carrying himself with the confidence of a warrior who understood both his place in the tribe and his supreme ability to deliver against his responsibilities. In the place of the usual centurion’s crest across his helmet, a black wolf’s head was tied across the iron bowl’s surface, the skin of its lips pulled back in a perpetual snarl that exposed the long yellow teeth, the mark of the tribe’s priests who fought alongside the cohort’s warriors with equal ferocity in battle and tended to their spiritual needs in addition to their military roles.

  ‘As your priest, my task is much the same as that of our brother Draco. Nothing that either of us can tell you now will make you better warriors, or more efficient in your harvest of our unsuspecting enemy. Draco’s role at this time is to assure you that you are the finest fighters in the empire, straining at your ropes to be released on these unsuspecting children …’ He waved a hand across the darkened river. ‘Whereas mine is to remind you that Our Lord Hercules is watching us at all times, but above all at this time, eager for our zealous sacrifice to his name. So when you kill, my brothers, kill with his name on your lips, and if today is your day to die for the tribe’s honour, then die in a blaze of glory, shouting his praise as you take as many of them with you as can be reaped by a single man. And if you are to die, then make your death a sacrifice to him, and send enough of the enemy before you to earn your welcome into his company.’

  Draco nodded.

  ‘Wise words, which are being sha
red with your centuries by each of your priests even now. But remember, nobody here is to go looking for their glorious death. What I need most is live centurions for a difficult summer of fighting, not more lines in the song of the fallen, so any man I see risking his life unnecessarily will have me to deal with after the battle, if he survives.’

  He waved a dismissive hand, sending them back to their centuries.

  ‘Enough. Go and tell your men that it is time to be Batavi once again.’

  ‘They’re on the move.’

  Vespasianus stared down into the gloom, barely able to make out the men of the Batavian cohorts as they advanced out of the long line of legion and auxiliary forces that had formed a wall of iron along the length of the Medui’s twisting course across the battlefield. Staring across the river, he strained his ears for any cries of alarm from the men who must surely be watching the river, but the only sound that he could hear was the bellowing of centurions and their optios along the legions’ line as they chivvied their men into battle order.

  ‘How is it that they’re not seen?’

  Geta smiled, his teeth a bright line in the near darkness.

  ‘Simple. The Britons do not expect an attack, and therefore they do not look for one. The fires that have kept them warm and on which they plan to cook their breakfast serve only to destroy their ability to see in the darkness. And now, colleague, watch the impossible.’

  The Germans’ first cohort had reached the river’s eastern bank, and without any apparent pause had advanced into the water with their determination unhindered by the fact that it was reportedly too deep for a man’s feet to touch the bottom at that point, especially with low tide still an hour away. Vespasianus shook his head in amazement.

  ‘They’re swimming? In armour? Gods below, I heard the stories but I wasn’t sure I could believe them.’

  ‘Until now?’ Geta grinned at the brothers. ‘Believe. But that’s only half of what they can do.’

  Swimming alongside the leading horse, the mount of the decurion who commanded his first century’s squadron of twenty-six horsemen, Draco looked back at the dimly illuminated scene on the riverbank behind them, nodding to himself at the speed with which each succeeding wave of men was quickly and silently entering the water. Two fully armed and armoured soldiers were swimming alongside every horse, each man using one hand to grip onto its saddle and the other to hold his spear and shield underneath him for the slight buoyancy they afforded, kicking with his legs to swim alongside the beast while the rider used its bridle to keep himself afloat. Both men and horses swam in silence, the only noise the beasts’ heavy breathing as they worked to swim with the weight of three armed men to support, filling him with the same fierce pride he felt every time the tribe practised the manoeuvre, or employed it to cross an unfordable river and turn an enemy’s flank with their deadly, unexpected presence. The far bank loomed out of the murk, and the horse beside him lurched as its hoofs touched the bottom, dragging him forward as its feet gripped the river mud. Feeling his boots sinking into the soft surface he pumped his legs furiously to keep pace with the beast, its rider now wading alongside his mount’s head as it forged forward, restraining its eagerness to be out of the water.

  Releasing his hold on the saddle, he waved a hand forward at his chosen man.

  ‘Two hundred paces up the slope and hold,’ Draco whispered. ‘Form ranks for the advance and then wait for me. Quietly.’

  Both the chosen man and decurion nodded, vanishing into the gloom while Draco turned back to the river, as his body recovered from the exertions of swimming under the dead weight of so much iron and sodden wool. He waited as the rest of the first three centuries followed the leading horses, their spacing so close that all of the seventy-odd beasts were past him in barely twenty panting breaths. The cohort’s remaining three centuries were hard on their heels, Kivilaz nodding his respect as he passed Draco at the head of his men with a look of determination that made his face almost comically grim, the cohort’s rear rank passing him with the front rank men of the second cohort close up behind them. Their senior centurion waded ashore, water pouring from his soaked clothing, saluting as he panted for breath, and Draco returned the gesture as he turned away, having passed responsibility for the river’s bank to the man whose soldiers were now surging ashore. Hurrying back up the slope, he found the front rank of his own cohort formed and ready to move, a compact mass of muscle, bone and iron with the Batavi soldiers standing alongside their horses, any uncertainty they might once have felt at the beasts’ looming physical presence long since trained out of them, just as the animals were equally well used to the presence of armoured men on either flank.

  ‘Any sign of life out there?’

  His chosen man’s response was no louder than a whisper.

  ‘It’s all quiet. Want some scouts out while we form up?’

  ‘Yes. But quietly.’

  He turned back to the river and walked down the slope past the waiting cohorts, heartened to see that his command’s incessant stream of men and beasts was almost invisible despite the slowly lightening shade of grey in the sky above them. Hurrying up the slope, they packed in close behind the leading cohorts, men squeezing water from their tunics and upending scabbards to empty them of any remaining water as they readied themselves to fight, rubbing their limbs to massage some heat back into them. The closest of them looked at Draco questioningly, eager to be on the move. Draco shook his head, his words loud enough to reach only a few of his men.

  ‘Not yet. But soon enough.’

  A waterlogged figure squelched up to him, and Draco saluted as he recognised the tribune who had been given permission by his legatus to accompany them across the river in order to provide the army’s commanders with an account of the raid.

  ‘Tribune Lupercus.’

  The Roman took a handful of his tunic, squeezing out the water, and looked about him.

  ‘Well now, Prefect Draco, are we ready to attack? The fact that you’ve allowed me across the river must mean you’ve got your entire command between my delicate body and the Britons.’

  Draco grinned back at him, having warmed to the young Roman in the days since Legatus Geta had appointed him to accompany the powerful cohorts fielded by the Batavi and their allies. While the Roman was only attached to the tribe as an observer, with no formal command responsibility given that the tribe provided their own officers, the man’s eagerness to fight was as transparent as that of his own men, and there was little that the tribe respected more than a man born with the urge to fight.

  ‘We’re ready, Tribune. Just stay close to me and don’t do anything stupid. I’ve no desire to win this battle and then find myself in the shit for letting a young gentleman get himself run through with a spear.’

  ‘Or trip up and fall on his own sword?’ The Roman grinned at him in the half-darkness. ‘Have a little faith, Draco. My father didn’t invest in ten years of tuition in the finer arts of swordsmanship to see me end up face down in the mud of a tawdry little battlefield like this. If I’m going to die for Rome I expect the time and place to be a good deal more auspicious!’

  ‘Where are they now?’

  The last of the eight Batavian cohorts was across the river and had disappeared into the gloom, invisible to the men watching from the hillside.

  ‘I gave orders for them not to attack until they had their entire strength across the Medui.’

  Geta was staring across the river at the encamped Britons.

  ‘And then to strike fast and hard. We’ll know when that happens, I expect, by the sound of screaming, if those Germans can be trusted to do as they’ve been instructed …’

  Draco nodded with satisfaction as the last of his men trotted up the slope still panting for breath from their swim, clapping a hand on the eighth cohort’s leading centurion’s shoulder.

  ‘So far, so good. I’ll give your men a short while to get their wind back, then we move. Coming, Tribune?’

  At the column’
s head, the scouts had returned from their brief foray into the spectrally lit countryside, saluting as he completed his swift march up the column’s length with Lupercus close behind.

  ‘What did you find?’

  ‘Open ground for a quarter of a mile to the east. Sounds of men and horses to the south.’

  ‘Any sounds of alarm? Any shouting or noises of horses moving?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  He turned to the three centurions of his front rank centuries.

  ‘Ready your men. We move on my command.’

  Waving a hand, he led them forward at the walk, knowing that each successive rank would follow on behind the leading centuries, leaving his sword in its scabbard in a calculated gesture of confidence as they climbed the shallow slope in a stealthy movement that would hopefully take them past the left-hand end of the unsuspecting Britons’ line. After counting off two hundred paces’ progress, he stepped out ahead of the front rank and hissed a command at his leading centurions, sweeping his right arm out in an exaggerated gesture and staying in position to direct the second three centuries to follow the front rank as they wheeled the column through a quarter-turn, changing their path from one past the enemy line’s end to a direction that would take them directly into the Britons’ rear, if his estimate of the distances involved was correct. Passing the task of marshalling the oncoming centuries to the second cohort’s senior centurion, he hurried to catch his own front rank, silently ordering a halt with both hands outstretched. After a moment, the leading men and horses of the second cohort took their place on the first’s right, their deployment from the marching column into a two-century-deep line one they had practised time and time again, until the transition from march to line of battle was second nature. Waiting until the eighth cohort had taken their place in a long line of horsemen and soldiers, he stepped into the front rank, positioning himself alongside his decurion’s horse once more and raising his right hand to his lips in readiness to give the signal his men were waiting for.