Adrian Goldsworthy - Vindolanda

‘The centurion in charge of the column coming up from Bremesio estimates the bands of horsemen as numbering several hundred,’ the provincial legate told Ferox late that night.

Ferox was tired, for he and Vindex had spent the day riding hard, marauding across the land, taking care to be seen on the tops of hills by the troops going up the road. The Brigantian scouts had acted the part of rebellious warriors, and the task had amused them, especially when they were told to set light to any abandoned buildings they found.

‘Imaginative fellow, that centurion,’ Ferox said. It had taken a good deal of effort to persuade the legate to release the scouts held under loose arrest at Vindolanda, but in the end he had had his way and with the other warriors who had come in time there had been twenty-three riders out in the hills. ‘Perhaps, my lord, it would be wise not to place him in charge of counting stores.’

The army marched an hour before dawn. Ferox and the advance guard of the exploratores set out two hours before that, although he left Vindex and his men behind to rest and catch up before the end of the day. The legate had given him eighty troopers detached from their units and it was a pleasant surprise to find Victor and the Thracian from his own burgus among them. They were good choices, active and intelligent, and his impression of the rest of his command was equally favourable. It seemed that Neratius Marcellus was a clever man, who liked to plan ahead and tried to prepare as well as possible. Ferox hoped that he was also lucky, for without that the odds were on a disaster and a wave of blood and ruin sweeping over the north.

Marker stones were already there warning of the approach of a large force. There were others put down by the Textoverdi, vaguer warnings of danger, and there was no hiding the wariness among the people they met. Ferox had already heard the rumours of a work of great magic made greater by the hideous sacrifice of a queen of the Romans and the killing of their king. It made little difference when he told them that neither had died, and that the actual victim was born a slave and not royal. People only shook their heads and talked of dark times and a blood-red winter.

For most of the first day Ferox stayed with his outposts. The men worked in pairs, spaced wide apart across the lands to either side of the road. He kept half a dozen troopers with him, half a mile back, and had similar groups on either flank. On the second day he was strengthened by Vindex and his men and placed patrols in the rear as well.

The army had made good progress, covering fifteen miles on the first day, helped by the frost-hardened ground and the restless energy of a provincial legate who rode up and down the columns, joking, encouraging and chivvying the men along. Nearly half the force were legionaries, and that was an unusual thing so far north. Marcellus had instructed both II Augusta and XX Valeria Victrix to provide a cohort each, led by their best centurions and reinforced with the fittest and ablest men so that each numbered over six hundred and fifty: VIIII Hispana contributed two cohorts who had spent the last year up on the frontier, but were reduced by sickness and other losses to some six hundred men between them. Marcellus told them to show the other legions what real veterans looked like, then he told the men of II Augusta that they were the emperor’s own, named by the divine Augustus, and must live up to their reputation as the finest legion anywhere, and afterwards he reminded the Victrix that they were ones who had beaten Boudicca all those years ago, and said that he expected them to win more glory in the next weeks.

Flavius Cerialis had three centuries of infantry, the same ones that had gone on the punitive expedition, but, in spite of the losses they had suffered, the rush of volunteers to avenge the attacks on the commander and his wife had boosted their numbers to some two hundred and fifty men – more than their proper compliment. Sulpicia Lepidina and the children had travelled by carriage with them as far as Coria. Ferox had not cared for the idea, but they would probably be safer there than anywhere else for the moment. There had been no chance to speak, but he had glimpsed her several times, because the legate believed it was important for her to be visible as proof of the failure of the attack. The Batavians cheered whenever they saw her, and several times he had only known she was about when he heard the great roar.

Cohors III Batavorum, their sister unit, shared their anger and longing for revenge. Whatever the Romans said, Cerialis was from their royal house, and she was his wife or queen, and they would die for them both. The cohort provided another three hundred men, formed into five centuries, and these men also began to cheer whenever the lady and her husband came in sight, swearing to make those who had threatened them pay. The mood spread. Cohors I Tungrorum had begged to be included in the expedition and made up a century of seventy men, attached for the moment to Rufinus and his Spaniards who mustered one hundred and eighty infantrymen. The Tungrians knew the lady, the Spanish knew her by reputation and they too raised a great cry when they saw her. Soon even the century of eighty archers detached from a cohort based far to the south took up the cry as well.

Ferox had spent his adult life around soldiers from all over the empire. They could be brutal, ruthless, cruel, and were capable of stealing anything that was not nailed down – and often even that did not stop them. For all that they had a sentimental streak a mile wide and could be kind, even gentle when you least expected it. It helped that Sulpicia Lepidina was beautiful, the sort of woman a soldier dreamed about and knew that he could never have. It helped even more that she smiled at them, laughed at their jokes and even made a few in return. Ferox watched as a whole army fell in love with a woman and marvelled as the affection spread. He had left Coria long before the main force, but later he heard that she had sat on horseback to watch them go by and that rank after rank of soldiers had cheered her, legionaries and auxiliaries alike. Neratius Marcellus kissed her hand in farewell to yells of approval, and then pecked her cheek to a deafening roar of acclamation. Cerialis glowed with the reflected glory. In their few meetings Ferox did not get the impression of a man gnawed by sorrow for his murdered lover.

The army marched in high spirits, eager to smite a loathsome enemy on behalf of a beautiful woman. It was a theme fit for the bards to set to verse, but so far not even Ferox’s scouts had seen a single one of those enemies. On the second day a bitter east wind began to blow, at times knocking the breath from men as they struggled along a route that was becoming steeper. They did not set out as early, for it took longer than usual to break up camp. On Neratius Marcellus’ orders twelve were expected to sleep in tents meant for eight, and four more were expected to be on sentry duty or otherwise awake while the rest slept. He had also instructed that the roads in each night’s camp and the intervals between the tent-lines were to be made narrower than usual. This meant that the ramparts enclosed a much smaller space and helped to make the force look smaller, but it also made it harder to form up ready to march on the next morning. They made barely ten miles on the second day.

On the third day the east wind brought in thick cloud to cover the whole sky. Not long after dawn the rain came, turning to sleet and then snow as the day wore on before switching back to sleet later in the afternoon. Men’s cloaks became soaked and heavy as they plodded along. Neratius Marcellus had nearly nine hundred horsemen under his command, three hundred and fifty apiece from Aelius Brocchus’ ala Petriana and his own singulares, and the rest made up of detachments from the cohorts, a contingent of mounted legionaries and the exploratores. Then there were six hundred pack mules and ponies, and a few oxen for the handful of carts carrying essential equipment too bulky to put in a pack.