Vespasian: Tribune of Rome (38 page)

Vespasian nodded. ‘And did this fourth man also have a small beard and very brown skin?’

‘I believe he did. You know him?’

‘We met briefly. It wasn’t the friendliest of encounters. His name is Hasdro. Should he return this way I believe Antonia would thank you for killing him. He placed a spy in her house.’

‘I will see what can be arranged,’ she replied, looking at him in a different light. She admired a man who could, with good reason, so easily order another’s death.

She stood and clapped her hands. A slave girl entered with a small scroll and handed it to her mistress.

‘Her letter also contained this.’ Tryphaena gave him the scroll. ‘I will leave you to read it. When you have finished someone will escort you out. May the gods go with you, Vespasian.’

‘And also with you, domina.’

She left the room, leaving Vespasian alone with his letter, the first that he had ever received. His heart pounded as he broke the seal; he looked quickly for the signature: Caenis.

Vespasian left the palace a short while later feeling as though he hadn’t a care in the world. Caenis’ letter had been all that he had hoped for, and more, as he had composed her replies to his imaginary letters in his head on the long, unpleasant journey in the mule cart at the hands of the Caenii.

On his return his companions mistook the look on his face.

‘It would seem that your friend enjoyed the meeting with Queen Tryphaena,’ Paetus laughed. ‘By the looks of him I’d say that Venus was there too.’

Vespasian shrugged, said nothing and mounted his horse.

As they passed through the town gates Magnus drew level with Vespasian.

‘Well?’ he asked.

‘Hasdro passed through here three days ago, with three Praetorians.’

‘So that’s why you’ve got that love-struck look on your face. One squeeze of his balls and you’re his for ever.’

‘Very funny.’

‘I thought so. So the Queen was quite a looker, then?’

‘She was, and she also had a letter for me from Caenis.’

‘Ah, that would do it.’ Magnus grinned at his friend.

Vespasian was in no mood for conversation. He kicked his horse and accelerated away.

The morning was clear and cold; a strong breeze blew down from the snow-capped Haemus Mountains to the north, forcing them to keep their cloaks wrapped tightly around their shoulders. The condensation of their horses’ breath billowed from their nostrils as they made their way across the steadily rising ground, sometimes trotting, sometimes cantering to their destination. Ahead was the northern end of the Rhodope range where Poppaeus had the rebels holed up.

‘Will there be another battle, Paetus?’ Vespasian asked.

The cavalry prefect smiled, his bright eyes shining in the strengthening sun. ‘Poppaeus has been trying to draw them out for a month now, but they won’t budge. Our spies tell us that they’re divided into three factions. There are those that want to throw themselves on our mercy, which may or may not be forthcoming; then there’re those who want to charge out of their stronghold, after killing their women and children, and die fighting, taking as many of us with them as possible; and finally there’s a completely fanatical faction that wants to kill their women and children and then commit mass suicide.’ He laughed; the others joined in. ‘But seriously, Poppaeus is trying to avert the last option; it’s not good to create too many fanatical martyrs. He’s in secret negotiations with a chap called Dinas, who is the leader of the first faction, trying to get him to talk some sense into the others. The trouble is that he can’t offer complete clemency, that would send a bad message; some have got to be nailed up on crosses or lose hands or eyes, otherwise anyone with a petty grievance will rebel, thinking that if they lose they’ll be free to go back to their villages, with their wife’s virtue intact and all their limbs in place, to carry on as before until their next opportunity comes along.’

‘Quite so,’ Corbulo agreed. ‘It’s a tricky situation. How is he putting pressure on them? Has he dug siege lines around them?’

‘He’s done his best. We’ve constructed over four miles of trenches and ramparts around them, but their stronghold’s too high, you could never completely encircle it. So we send out patrols and try and stop any supplies getting in, but they slip through at night. Water is the one thing that they’re short of: they’ve only got one spring up there. But even so they could stay put for months, and the longer they’re there the more chance there is of other tribes joining them, then we could find ourselves surrounded.’

‘What about storming it?’ Vespasian asked.

Paetus burst out laughing; Vespasian reddened.

‘My dear chap, forgive me.’ Paetus managed to get his mirth under control and reached out to touch Vespasian’s arm in a conciliatory gesture. ‘That’s exactly what the bastards want. They’ve spent the winter fortifying the walls and digging ditches and traps, nasty things with sharpened stakes in. Nearly fell into one myself last time I was up there scouting. No, it’s damned near impregnable, you’d lose four cohorts just to get to the gate, then two more to get through them. And behind it are sheer cliffs. Even if you could get down those, it would be with so few men that you’d be massacred once you’d got to the bottom.

‘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.

They neared the centre of the camp and the tents became larger as they entered the realm of the staff officers and tribunes. At the junction of the Via Praetoria and the Via Principalis in the centre of the camp stood the praetorium, a fifteen-foot-high, fifty-foot-square red-leather tent, decorated with black and gold trimmings, where Poppaeus had his headquarters.

Paetus dismissed his turma, then he dismounted and walked up to the two legionaries guarding the entrance. Vespasian and his comrades followed. The guards saluted.

‘Cavalry Prefect Paetus, Tribunes Corbulo and Vespasian and Centurion Faustus request an interview with the general,’ Paetus reported.

One of the guards went inside to announce them.

‘I think that means that you’re not invited,’ Vespasian whispered to Magnus.

‘Suits me, sir, I was never too fond of generals. I’ll get the horses stabled.’

Shortly, the guard came back out with a well-dressed slave.