Douglas Jackson - Enemy of Rome

‘You got that close?’

Serpentius shrugged. ‘There are drainage channels leading to the river, and the camp is between two of them.’ He crouched and the other men huddled around him as he pulled out his knife and cleared a patch of sandy ground. There was just enough light to see the two lines he drew to represent the river, a further two to show the bridge, and a square on the ground to identify the camp. On either side of the camp a line extended to the Athesis at a slight diagonal, diverging as they approached the river bank. He met Valerius’s eye. ‘They have possibly two cohorts of infantry on this side of the bridge, and what looks like a third cohort and a cavalry squadron guarding the far side.’

Valerius felt a flare of exultation at the news that the enemy had split their forces. He tried to create an image of the fort, the bridge and the surrounding terrain. ‘What about guards?’

‘They were there, but they didn’t see me. They didn’t act like people who expect to meet opposition any time soon.’

‘You’re not two thousand men on horses,’ Valerius pointed out.

Serpentius nodded, acknowledging the truth of it. ‘But our Thracian archers should be able to take care of the guards. I can get them close enough, if they leave their horses behind.’

‘They’re holding the bridge until their main force comes up from the south.’ Valerius mentally wove his way through the enemy strategy. ‘That could be tomorrow, the next day, or next week, but if they do cross it gives them a tactical advantage over Primus. With enough men on this side of the river, they could push us back to Aquileia and bottle us up in the hills. If we attacked them it would be on ground they’d chosen and prepared for defence. We might still win, but it would cost a lot of blood.’

Octavius nodded, and his eyes glowed in the falling dusk as he realized what Valerius was thinking. ‘But if we can throw them back across the river …’

‘Burn the bridge and give Valens and Caecina something to think about …’

‘We should hit them at dawn,’ Serpentius advised, ‘when they’re taking their first piss of the day and thinking of lighting their cooking fires.’ His face twisted into a scowl. ‘But this isn’t horse country. I don’t know how close I can get your men before we’re seen.’

Valerius turned to the cavalry officer. ‘How will your men feel about fighting without their horses?’

Octavius grunted. ‘How would you feel about fighting without your armour?’ He sighed. ‘But if it’s the only way to kill them …’

Valerius slapped him on the shoulder. ‘Officers’ conference when we get back to camp. Serpentius will instruct your best scouts on the terrain. We’ll hit them from both sides. They will be like sheep to our wolves.’

The German’s eyes glittered. ‘And like sheep they will be slaughtered.’

In Serpentius, Octavius’s wolves were led by a hunting leopard. When they’d ridden as close as they dared, the Spaniard led the dismounted cavalrymen unerringly through the olive groves in the darkness. The last man in each turma of thirty men was linked to the first in the following turma by a rope, so even with two thousand men none was lost along the way. Despite the relative warmth of the night every trooper wore a cloak to dull the chinking of his armour. The silence wasn’t perfect — Valerius cringed at the rattle of sword belts and the occasional muffled collision and whispered curses that signalled when a man fell or stumbled — but none was so loud that it carried to the Vitellian encampment four hundred paces away. They went three abreast, striding warily because in the pitch dark every step felt as if it would carry them into a ditch. Their eyes never left the shadowy silhouette of the man in front, and the rustle of movement to rear or flank was the only evidence they were part of a larger whole. Even for the veterans among them the still night held a constant threat that made the blood thunder in their ears and their hearts hammer against their ribs. They told themselves it wasn’t fear, only the anticipation of battle, but few among them didn’t pray to the gods of their homeland during the ordeal of that interminable journey. Eventually, a hissed command rippled down the line ordering the halt that confirmed they’d come to the most dangerous part of the march. Behind him, Valerius knew, the picked scouts of the Hispanorum Aravacorum would be leading their turmae east to the drainage ditch closest to the far side of the camp. The success of the attack depended on total concealment. If even one man gave away his position the enemy guards would alert the entire camp. A heart-stopping delay as Serpentius gave his fellow Spaniards of the Aravacorum time to reach their position, then the First was on the move again through the darkness. After a few moments Valerius heard a whispered command to the leading rank of the turma , and word came back that they’d reached the ditch and to take care. Valerius would have continued with them, but a hand came out of the darkness and drew him aside. A harsh voice whispered in his ear. ‘Better that you’re in the centre where you can control things.’

He waited, kneeling by Serpentius’s side as the Spaniard counted the turmae through, warning each commander of the obstacle ahead. Once they were in the ditch they would make their way south towards the river, taking station opposite the temporary Vitellian fort. At a given moment Serpentius drew a junior officer aside from one of the units and told him to stay in position and inform the following cavalrymen about the ditch. When he was certain the man understood his duty he and Valerius joined the front rank of the man’s turma and slipped down the bank until their feet sank into the shallow layer of stinking ooze at the bottom. Thick mud sucked at their sandals like a living thing and released a stench of rotting eggs to clog their nostrils. The channel was only chest deep, and to stay hidden they were forced to walk in a low crouch that quickly made Valerius’s back ache and his calves burn as he wrestled to free his feet with every step. He was grateful when the man ahead stopped and he was able to sink back against the side of the trench to rest with his face to the sky.

His eyes picked out the brightest stars. When he was a child he had sometimes seen the faces of the gods in the stars, but at others they had formed images of sea monsters and ships. Now he could see that beyond the brightest stars there were many lesser ones, and beyond them a sense of still more, of great depth and untold numbers. The effect made him feel an unnatural sense of wonder and smallness. He shrugged off the sensation. Concentrate. Stars, but no moon, thank the gods. By now the men in the far ditch would also be in position.

Careful to remove his helmet to avoid creating a familiar silhouette, he risked a glance through the tangle of rushes and nettles on the lip of the ditch. Perhaps forty paces away a faint shadow was just visible against the luminosity of the night sky, and his mind visualized the raised bank topped by a palisade of stakes. That bank would be patrolled by sentries and fronted by at least two, possibly three ditches. In the enemy commander’s position, Valerius would have dug those ditches deep and filled them with traps, but Serpentius said that wasn’t the case, and Valerius had learned to trust the Spaniard with his life. Few men hated Romans as Serpentius did, but he was happy to serve Valerius because Valerius had saved him from certain death in the arena. The Spaniard had been taken in a reprisal raid after his Asturian mountain tribe had dared to raid one gold convoy too many. Romans like the men he marched with had killed his wife and son and he would never forget that, but revenge must wait until he had repaid his debt to the one who had given him his freedom and his life. A born warrior, and if he was to be believed a prince of his tribe, his fighting skills and preference for pitiless violence had made him an ideal recruit for the arena. Deadly with either sword or spear, his lightning speed and lethal precision soon earned him the name Serpentius — the Snake. Another man might eventually have won his freedom through his victories and popularity, but the Spaniard killed with a cold, murderous intensity that intimidated rather than entertained, and he never hid his contempt for the mob. Eventually, he would have been sacrificed, outnumbered and poorly armed, his death delivered to the crowd in a tawdry, blood-spattered spectacle. Valerius had found him just in time.