Robert Fabbri - Tribune of Rome

‘We’ve just got to keep them there and hope that either they see sense and come out to surrender or fight; or start fighting amongst themselves and do our job for us.’

‘At least we’re not too late.’ Corbulo sounded relieved; the thought of arriving too late for any action had plagued him all the way from Italia.

‘No, no, you’re not too late; but what you’ve arrived in time for is anyone’s guess.’

They rode on in silence for a while, eating up the miles, climbing higher and higher into the hills. After a short break at midday to eat some bread and smoked ham and allow their horses to graze on the thinning grass, they came across a series of thirty or forty large scorch marks on the ground.

‘This is where we beat them,’ Paetus said with pride. ‘These are what are left of their pyres; we killed over half of them, losing no more than six hundred of our lads all told. There must have been thirty thousand of the bastards to start off with, all yelling and hollering and showing their arses and waving those vicious long blades of theirs.’

‘Rhomphaiai,’ Corbulo said unnecessarily.

‘Indeed. Nasty things, one took one of my horse’s legs off, would have had mine too if the poor beast hadn’t fallen on the savage wielding it. Pinned him down, it did. I managed to jump clear and skewered the bastard. I was furious; it was a horse from the gods.’ Paetus patted the neck of his present mount, as if to show that he meant no offence.

As they progressed across the field Vespasian spotted signs of a recent battle all around: spent arrows, discarded helmets, broken swords, javelins and shields. Here and there lay an unburnt corpse almost stripped of flesh by wolves or buzzards, strips of rotting clothing clinging to its tattered limbs. Away in the distance on either side there were countless dark mounds like large molehills. Paetus caught his gaze.

‘Horses,’ he said. ‘We’re roughly at the centre of our line; there were fierce cavalry battles on both flanks. We didn’t capture enough prisoners to burn all the dead horses, so we just left them. Mine’s out there somewhere, poor thing; a horse from the gods.’ He shook his head mournfully and patted his mount’s neck again.

They passed over the battlefield and came to an abandoned camp.

‘That was our first camp, when we moved up to the present position we gave it to King Rhoemetalces for his army of loyal Thracians. Though why we didn’t just send them home I don’t know, they did nothing but pillage and get pissed. Fucking useless, they were.’

‘Were?’ Corbulo asked.

‘The rebels saw them as a greater enemy than us. A few nights after the battle they launched a small attack on one of our support camps. We all ran around trying to beat them off, not realising that it was only a diversion. The main body of their army had circled around us and fell on the loyal Thracians, who of course were all too drunk on that disgusting wine of theirs to do anything about it. It was a massacre. Almost all of them were slaughtered, over ten thousand of them and their families, no prisoners taken. Still, it won’t affect the course of the war. Rhoemetalces was having dinner with the general at the time so they didn’t get him, which had been their primary objective. He’s still lurking around in our camp, too scared to leave and make it back to Philippopolis. Mind you, I don’t suppose his mother will be very pleased to see him, having lost an army.’

An hour before dusk they came finally to Poppaeus’ camp. It had been built on the last piece of level ground before the Rhodope range rose from its foothills. Vespasian gawped: it was huge; one mile square, surrounded by a six-foot-deep ditch and ramparts, half turf and half wood, ten feet high. Along their length, every hundred paces, were thirty-foot-high wooden towers, housing ballistae capable of firing bolts or rounded rocks over a quarter of a mile. Barracked within it were the IIII Scythica and the V Macedonica, plus five auxiliary cavalry alae, three auxiliary infantry cohorts, ten smaller units of light archers, slingers and javelin-men and the slaves to serve them all. Two hundred paces in front of it ran the line of the four-mile-long defensive trench and breastwork, constructed to pen the enemy in. It curved away and headed up the mountain, until soft earth gave way to hard granite and sheer cliffs, preventing it from reaching any higher. This too had towers along its length. One hundred paces to either side of the main camp were two smaller constructions, about the same size as Vespasian’s column had built the night before the river battle.

‘What are they, Paetus?’ he asked.

‘Don’t you know your Caesar, my dear chap? Build smaller camps within artillery range of the main one and the enemy cannot surround you without being threatened from the rear; not that they’ve got enough men left to surround us, there’s no more than twelve or thirteen thousand left up there.’ He pointed towards the mountains; they looked up. About a thousand feet above Vespasian could see the Thracians’ stronghold surrounded by a sea of tents. It looked comparatively small at a distance but he surmised that up close it must be formidable if it contained all those men and their women and children.

‘That would be a tough nut to crack,’ Magnus mused. ‘I can see why the general is happy to sit here and wait for them to come down.’

‘But for how long, eh?’ Corbulo said. ‘If the tribes behind us rise we could find ourselves surrounded here by enough men to besiege all three camps, hundreds of miles from the nearest legions in Illyria. That would be a nasty situation.’

‘Quite so, quite so,’ Paetus agreed. ‘Very unpleasant indeed.’

They entered the camp by the Porta Praetoria. Paetus greeted the centurion of the watch’s salute with a cheery wave.

‘Good evening, Aulus. Tribune Titus Flavius Vespasianus and his freedman Magnus, Tribune Corbulo and Centurion Faustus, whom you already know, I believe.’

Aulus’ eyes widened. ‘Faustus, you old dog, we’d given you up for dead, captured by Thracians we heard. In fact we’d already cashed in your funeral fund and had a whip-round to send home to your people in Ostia. We’d better get our money back.’

Faustus grinned. ‘I want a list of who gave what, that’ll tell me who my friends really are.’

‘I’ll do it right now. It won’t take a moment, it’s not long.’

‘Sheep-fucker!’

‘Sailor’s tart!’

‘Nice as it is to stand here exchanging pleasantries with old friends,’ Paetus interjected, ‘we do need to report to the general. Where is he?’

‘In the praetorium, sir. Good to see you back, Faustus.’

As they moved off Vespasian noticed that apart from a perfunctory salute Aulus did nothing to register his pleasure at Corbulo’s return.

Inside the camp the bustle of military life was progressing on a greater scale than Vespasian had ever seen before; there were literally thousands of men. In the hundred paces between the gate and the first of the two thousand or so tents centuries were being drilled, the shouts and screams of their centurions and optiones ringing in their ears. Fatigue parties were filling in old latrines and digging new ones. The night patrols of light infantry were being assembled and briefed by their officers. Cavalry turmae, just arrived in from day patrolling, were unsaddling their mounts as slaves waited to take them to the horse-lines for grooming.

Vespasian eagerly took in all he saw whilst trying to appear as nonchalant as possible. They followed the Via Praetoria down through lines and lines of eight-man papiliones. To their right were billeted the IIII Scythica and on their left the V Macedonica. Outside each papilio the contubernium’s slaves were busy making fires in preparation for the evening meal. Groups of legionaries, already dismissed for the evening, sat polishing armour, cleaning weapons and gear or playing dice. All around their voices could be heard arguing or jesting; the occasional fight that broke out was quickly stopped by the optiones. Vespasian saw at least two miscreants being led off, with hands tied behind their backs, to the jeers of watching soldiers.