Field of Mars (The Complete Novel) (25 page)

“A head-count of the men will be conducted. You will be escorted back to the legion and I will deliberate with my Parthian allies on what is to be done. Meanwhile the march will continue.”

*

“Is there something wrong, primor?” Dentianus asked when Rufinius returned and dismounted. “We’ve heard rumors.”

“What about?”

“Desertions,” said Appias. “Fabianus and some others.”

Rufinius grunted.

“It’s true, then. Perhaps Fabianus didn’t consider himself a slave, but rather a captured legionary,” Appias said. “In which case he neither deserted nor ran away, but in fact escaped, as is every captured soldier’s duty.”

“You mince words – and I have no doubt that is how Fabianus would view it,” said Rufinius. “But any slant he might care to give his actions will be disregarded by the Xiongnu, who paid handsomely to put these torcs on us.”

“The cunnus wasn’t happy about this turn of fate from the beginning,” observed Dentianus.

“He didn’t pick a white pebble in the lottery,” Rufinius recalled. “He was chosen by the men of his contubernium. Perhaps they were all of one mind from the beginning and were selected for this reason. An unknown number of legionaries are said to have run with Fabianus. Conceivably he is their leader. Appias, walk with me.”

Rufinius and Appias made their way through the men, down to where Fabianus’s contubernium would have been, but were met only by an empty tent and disturbed sand around it. “All eight men have gone,” said Rufinius.

“There will be retribution,” Appias said.

“Yes,” Rufinius agreed, acknowledging the simple fact.

Several legionaries saluted Rufinius, their faces fearful. “Hail, primor.”

The tribune returned the salutation. “Fabianus and his contubernium. Was there indication they were to desert?”

“No primor, none at all. They did not fraternize with us but kept to themselves.”

“Did Fabianus neglect his duty as optio?”

“There was little to do, primor, until the practice swords were distributed and drills commenced and then he worked us hard. It was good to have sword in hand, even a wooden one.”

“The goddess Atë makes mischief for idle hands,” Appias observed.

Cornicens blew the standard order at this time of day for the centuries to begin forming up.

As they returned to the lead century’s front line, Appias suggested: “Those men would never admit to prior knowledge of desertion, as they would be held partly responsible for not reporting it.”

“I am sure Nonus is saying the same thing to Saikan about me. By my reckoning, if those men knew about a plan to desert but chose instead to remain with the legion, I would count that in their favor.”

“But you are not the person who will sit in judgement of them.”

Rufinius exhaled heavily. Appias was right.

*

The army marched its miles, but after the halt at the end of this day, no rudes were distributed among the men. As darkness fell, a band of overseers arrived at the head of the column, come for Rufinius.

“Military Tribune Tullus Bassus Rufinius, known as Alexandricus,” said their leader. “You are summoned to council.”

“What’s all the officious excrementum?” Carbo wondered.

“If anything happens to the Alexandrian, you know this army will not take kindly to it. Or to you, merda,” Libo warned them.

“Are you threatening the envoy of General Saikan, grub?” the overseer said darkly.

“Say nothing more, legionary,” Rufinius warned Libo as he climbed onto his horse.

“Well, it’s not an invitation to drink wine or beer at the baths, faggot,” Carbo taunted the overseer. “But nor is it a threat, is it Libo? We’re just telling it like it is.”

“Carbo!” Rufinius shook his head, entreating the man to desist.

Other legionaries in the contubernia behind began throwing rocks at the overseers’ horses, which startled their leader’s mount to sudden flight.

“Just telling it like it is!” Carbo shouted again after him as Rufinius rode away with the remaining overseers.

*

The council occupied the tent erected nightly for General Saikan by his Parthian hosts, a voluminous palace compared to the canvas and hide boxes used by Rufinius and his legionaries. The general reclined on cushions on the floor, along with his usual retinue of officers. Also present were a number of Parthian officers, none of whom Rufinius knew by sight. Nonus was present, the scratches on his face beginning to fester. It was far from pleasing to see him becoming part of Saikan’s suite. Translator Bataar and the Syrian overseer were also attending.

Saikan came to his feet. “A head-count reveals that fifty-three slave soldiers have run away. One was your optio, Fabianus,” he said to Rufinius. “Were his plans common knowledge among your men?”

“No, General, it appears not,” said Rufinius.

“I accept your word, though there are others here who reject your assurances on this.”

Rufinius nodded.

“The loss of fifty-three slaves, or eighty-one slaves and some archers if the slaughter wrought by them is taken into account, represents a sizeable cost to my Chanyu’s purse. While we concede that there are always losses on a march, especially one as long as ours, we cannot allow the crimes of these runaways to be encouraged among the men.”

“Desertion is not on their minds,” Rufinius replied.

“General?” said Nonus, asking for permission to speak. Saikan gestured at him to continue and returned to his cushions. The overseer came to his feet.

“Tribune,
the man who was your
own optio
has run from the ranks and you say you knew not his intention to do so. It seems you have no idea what the men are thinking.”

Rufinius knew that he had just walked into a trap and he would walk into more ahead if he were not agile. “I repeat, I had no prior knowledge of Fabianus’s intent. Also, he was my
former
optio. As tribune, my role in the ranks has changed markedly.”

“Then you must agree that you know not how many more will desert?”

“Morale is good, given their privations. Men do not usually desert when spirits are high,” said Rufinius.

“Let us no longer use the word ‘desert’. That is a word reserved for legionaries and others in the military. We are slaves now, the property of another, and have lost all rights as well as claims to nationality, unless it is to the great nation of servitude.”

“Your Latin oratory has an audience of one, Nonus, and it does not impress. Get to the point.”

“The point, Tribune, is punishment.”

“The men who have not deserted have done nothing to deserve it.”

“As you yourself have admitted, you know not what is on the minds of the slaves you lead. Your owners simply desire to make an example of the runaways to discourage more of the same behavior.”

Rufinius glanced at the tattoo on Nonus’s upper arm, the official symbol of his legion and, beneath it, the unofficial one showing the ribald ink of a dog entering a surprised cat and the words,
Fuck them all.

“And this is something you, once a legionary yourself, are advocating?”

“We have only begun this journey and there is a long march ahead. General Saikan is keen to arrive with his slave army intact. The men, my once fellow legionaries, will respond positively.”

“To punishment?” A sickening weight descended on Rufinius’s bowels.

“A few more than fifty slaves have run,” Nonus continued. “One tenth of that number will be chosen by lot across the sixty centuries to be made an example of.”

Nonus checked this with Saikan, who nodded imperceptibly, the decision made before Rufinius’s arrival.

“What will be their punishment?”

“Crucifixion.”

“No!” Rufinius turned his attention from Nonus, anxious for his men. “General Saikan, I do not know what this man has told you, but Roman citizens
may not
be crucified
. That is Roman law.”

“As I said, Tribune, as slaves we have had our nationality bought from us,” Nonus continued. “We are slaves and slaves can indeed be crucified. That is Roman law.”

“You are the leader of the army and you will not be required to draw a lot with the men,” the General Saikan said.

Rufinius could see that argument was pointless but he was determined to try. “General, the best leaders share both the triumphs and the hardships of the men. If lots are to be drawn then I must also take a pebble. If I do not, the leadership you bought and paid for so handsomely will be undermined.”

The general took this to Nonus. “What think you of the tribune’s request?”

“The best leaders are not intimate with their men, either, General. There must be a separation, a gulf, so that the men who follow do so from the belief that their leaders come from different stock.” Nonus considered the question further and added, “If the men fear their leader more than they fear the enemy, that is as good as the lash.”

“Two different styles of leadership.” Saikan pondered his decision. “Rufinius, you speak as one who desires to lead from the front line.”

“While my sword arm is still strong, General. And that comes as no surprise.”

“This is not where I want you to be, for you will be most vulnerable to fatal blows. You are right in saying that you are an expensive investment and I wish to protect it. Let me say again, you will
not
draw a lot with your men, for what if you draw the white? But on the question of crucifixion, my mind is not determined one way or the other, though as it has been described to me, it would be a most unseemly way for a warrior to die. What other methods of punishment in the Roman manner could be called upon?”

“General,” said Nonus, “Roman law says that the legionaries who draw a white pebble could also be beheaded, whipped or clubbed to death, strangled, or buried alive. But I would caution against leniency. Setting a soft example would be no example at all.”

*

At dawn the following morning, the legionaries were drawn up in their ranks. A barrel containing eighty pebbles was placed beside each century, five white pebbles secreted among the black across the sixty barrels. The gods thus chose five legionaries from more than 5,000 to pay for the crimes of others.

When it was the turn of Appias to walk out of the lines to pick out his fate, white or black, Rufinius said to him, “Only two white pebbles have been taken. There are three left and it wouldn’t be right if one fell into your hand. You are not a legionary and we do not consider you one. You have not volunteered or been pressed into service. You walk in the line embedded as an observer only.”

The tribune then defied the order given by General Saikan, went to the barrel in the historian’s stead, lifted a pebble, and displayed it to an overseer.

“Black!” the overseer called out, taking the pebble and holding it aloft so that all could see, as was the practice.

The legionaries cheered this result as loudly as they booed the white pebbles, for it was known among the men that Rufinius had been denied the lottery by their Xiongnu masters. That he defied them and placed himself in the hands of the gods – just as they had been forced to do – made them love him all the more.

Many legionaries began to call out his name and salute. Others broke ranks and raced to touch him. Overseers jostled to remove Rufinius, and were accompanied by hordes of mounted Parthian archers who advanced on the centuries to quell the ruckus with arrows notched and bowstrings drawn.

The legionaries who selected white pebbles were held until the lottery was completed. They were then made to kneel beside the barrels and their hands were tied behind them to their ankles. A Parthian of immense size came forward with a heavy sword in hand, its blade unusually curved like a crescent moon. After several practice swings he swung it against an exposed neck. In this manner, four of the five had their heads separated clean. The fifth and last, a mercenary from Crete, a big man with powerful shoulders, took three chops to get the job done. And while these men were being dispatched, a hush of respect fell across the army and not a sound was heard but the grunt of the executioner, the hiss of the wind and the sound of metal through wet meat.

Later, signs painted on wood were hung on each corpse that read, “He pays for another’s misdeed.” And for the entire day the legions were ordered to remain standing, facing the dead, watching birds go about their grisly ways as legionaries dropped from the ranks, baked unconscious by the fearsome sun.

*

While the men stood in their ranks on the plain, Rufinius was brought before General Saikan in the privacy of his tent.

“What am I to do with you now?” said Saikan, accompanied by Translator Bataar who spoke Xiongnu, Pahlawānīg and Aramaic and the Syrian overseer who spoke Aramaic and Latin.

“The conundrum is of your own making, General,” Rufinius answered.

“Nonus says I should have you strangled in front of your men.”

“Nonus is a criminal who bears a grudge,” said Rufinius plainly.

“He tells me things you would not.”

“Along with his words, weigh his motives.”

The general shouted a command and two Parthian swordsmen entered and removed Rufinius to a secluded place away from the centuries. They bound his arms and placed him in a deep hole dug in the desert sand. And there he remained, forced to snap with his teeth, gnashing at the birds attempting to steal his eyes until exhausted, he fell unconscious.

Li-ch’ien, province of Gansu, Chin

a.d. VIII Id. Oct. 750 AUC

8 October, 4 BC

It has been at least a month since Viridia last put brush to silk. It’s the lung fevers. They came upon me and I have been dreadful ill for some weeks. If you could but see my arms … the muscles there seem more fluid than anything else. Apothecary Wu paid me the courtesy of a house call and his solution was to add more bark and insect husks to the concoction Viridia brews for me. I can only hope that my story is finished before I am, and that I have the opportunity to bid farewell to my friend, Protector-General Chen Tang. But enough sentimentality.

And so the march for Rufinius almost came to an end before it barely began. I cannot tell you what was on the mind of General Saikan – whether his intention was for Rufinius to die in the hole dug for him – for he did not share his thinking with me personally. I believe he thought Rufinius an especial man among men, for otherwise why go to such trouble and expense to have him as the legion’s tribune?

But I also believe Saikan struggled to reconcile Rufinius’s greatness casting a shadow over all, himself included, and the tribune a mere slave at that. This state of affairs could not have been easy to bear for a proud man of such stature as the general. Perhaps Saikan was in two minds about a fitting punishment for Rufinius’s insubordination, though certainly one full day buried in the desert was enough to kill most men. I heard an alternative view proposed – that at the time of the tribune’s punishment, Saikan was as yet still unaware of his abilities as a commander and believed if there was one Rufinius within the ranks, perhaps there could be others. To give you the essence of this angle – conceivably the man he had made tribune was not as unique as he had first thought, along with being more trouble than he was worth.

Certainly it is further imaginable that the Roman overseer Nonus, who was also valued by Saikan, may well have put all manner of doubt about Rufinius’s uniqueness in the general’s head, such was his animosity toward the tribune.

The question has been asked many times – did Saikan want Rufinius to die beneath the desert sun that day? Personally, I believe not. He could have left him there overnight, which would have killed Rufinius without a doubt. Saikan may well have wanted Rufinius’s life placed in the balance, so that tipping the scales one way or the other would be in the hands of the gods – or rather his god, Tengri. But I admit that this is all purely conjecture on my part.

As you might have already surmised, the desert did not take Rufinius to its bosom. A squadron of Parthian archers returned him unconscious at nightfall, dumping the tribune at the feet of Dentianus and Libo. After such privation, Alexandricus was indeed close to death. The parts of his body that were exposed – the tops of his shoulders and his head and face – were cracked and swollen by the sun. His skin wept from many blisters and there were lacerations aplenty from the attention of all the birds. In addition, a fever had taken hold of him and when conscious he was given to raving.

Meanwhile, the army continued its march ever eastwards. The legionaries took turns carrying the tribune while he fought for life. Mena, Rufinius’s slave who was now owned by the Xiongnu, was allowed enough freedom to tend to him, permission to do so granted by the general himself. And on the third night, Rufinius’s fever broke. But now my writing hand grows weary.

“Viridia!”