Rome’s Fallen Eagle (19 page)

Vespasian surveyed the carnage, gasping for breath and then looked down at his blood-splattered arms and legs in sheer wonder that they were still there. Having satisfied himself that he was indeed in one piece a sense of urgency came over him. ‘Magnus, keep a couple alive and that one-handed bastard if you find him.’ He dismounted and began looking at the Chatti dead.

Sabinus rode over; blood oozed from a cut on his forehead. ‘Thanks for your help, brother; I just managed the bastard in the end, but just is good enough.’

‘You can thank me by helping to look for that one-handed man.’

‘What was it about him?’ Sabinus asked, swinging off his horse. ‘You were about to tell me something.’

Vespasian turned a corpse over with his foot. ‘I recognised him from Rome.’

‘Where’ve you seen him?’

‘On the day of Caligula’s assassination, Uncle Gaius and I were in the theatre as you know. We managed to get out and then slipped down an alley to get away from the crush. We passed a dead German Bodyguard, and then at the end of the alley there was another one, leaning up against the wall, wounded; he was bald with a blond beard and you had just cut off his right hand.’

‘Me?’

‘Yes, you. I came out of the alley and saw a man in a cloak limping away with a wounded right thigh; that was you, wasn’t it?’

Sabinus thought for a moment and then nodded his head. ‘Yes, I suppose it was; two of the surviving Bodyguards followed me from the palace. I know that I killed one but whatever I did to the other I don’t know because he wounded me at the same time; but he went down screaming and I stayed standing and managed to escape. So you think that this is all about vengeance for me depriving him of his drinking hand?’

‘No, it’s more than that. If we assume that Magnus is right and only Claudius’ freedmen know where we’re going then it has to be one of them who is trying to stop us. It was Pallas’ idea, so why would he try and sabotage it? It also doesn’t make sense, as you said, for Narcissus to spare you and then try and kill you here. So that leaves Callistus; I’m sure that he’s behind it.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s something that Pallas said when he told me how he knew that you were wounded and therefore must be still in the city. He said that Callistus had questioned the wounded Bodyguard.’

Sabinus wiped a drop of blood from his eye and looked thoughtfully at it. ‘Fair enough; that connects the one-handed bastard with Callistus but it doesn’t explain what Callistus has to gain by stopping us from finding the Eagle. He needs Claudius to gain favour with the army as much as Pallas and Narcissus do.’

‘Yes, but he’s also in a power struggle with them. Pallas told me that Narcissus is the most powerful of the three and he and Callistus are secondary. I watched them leave the dais on the night that the Senate went to see Claudius outside the Praetorian camp. Narcissus had the place of honour, helping Claudius down; then Pallas and Callistus both tried to patronise one
another by offering the other the second place. Neither would accept the other’s condescension and they ended up going down together. Now if Pallas’ idea works and we come back with the Eagle then Claudius will favour him greatly and Callistus will feel that he’s relegated to third place.’

‘But if we fail then Pallas will take the blame.’

‘Exactly, Sabinus; and Callistus will feel he’s won this round.’

‘Even though he’s jeopardised the grander strategy of gaining Claudius a victory in Britannia?’

‘Not if at the same time he has his own scheme for gaining Claudius popularity with the army.’

‘How?’

Vespasian sucked on his lip and shook his head. ‘I don’t know; but Callistus isn’t stupid so he’ll have one.’

‘We’ve got two who are alive enough to answer some questions,’ Magnus said, walking up to the brothers, ‘but no sign of old one-handed matey-boy. He must have made it out and is across the river by now; but I reckon we’ll see him again.’

Vespasian turned and looked north; on the far bank two hundred or so warriors stood holding the river against them. ‘We won’t be able to cross here but we’ll worry about that once we’ve found out what the prisoners know.’

‘Take another one, Ansigar,’ Vespasian ordered, ‘and then ask him again.’

Ansigar pushed his weight down on his knife; after a moment’s pressure it cut through the bone and, with a spurt of blood, the ring finger was severed, falling to the ground to land next to its smaller, erstwhile neighbour. Ansigar growled again in German but his victim, an older Chatti warrior held down on his back by two auxiliaries, just screwed up his face against the pain and said nothing; his chest heaved unevenly, glistening with sweat. He had a deep stab wound in his left shoulder, just below his iron collar.

Vespasian looked down at the wreckage of the man’s left hand on the blood-drenched stone that was the chopping board; it was limp and extended at a strange angle from his forearm, which had been brutally broken after his first refusal to say why the Chatti
had attacked them. ‘Take the third,’ he hissed, ‘although I’ve a feeling that it’s going to be a waste of time with this one. But it may encourage our other friend to talk.’ He glanced over at the second prisoner, a younger man, kneeling with his hands bound behind him, staring with terrified eyes at his tormented comrade; he tried to tear himself loose from the two Batavians holding him as the third finger dropped to the ground.

The older man still refused to talk.

‘Shall I take off his hand, sir?’ Ansigar asked.

‘Yes.’

Ansigar drew his sword and laid it on the wrist; the warrior tensed at the touch. The young man let out a sob.

‘Wait!’ Vespasian shouted as Ansigar raised the blade. ‘Take his friend’s right hand.’

The maimed warrior was dragged away and the younger man’s bonds were cut. He started to scream and writhe like a landed eel as his two guards hauled him towards the stone. They forced him down onto his back and pulled out his right arm. Ansigar showed him the sword; a stream of German poured from the terrified man’s mouth.

‘He says that the one-handed man came half a moon ago and spoke with their King, Adgandestrius,’ Ansigar translated. ‘He doesn’t know what was said but when the man left, the King ordered a hundred warriors to go with him and to obey him in all commands. He led them to the Rhenus, opposite Argentoratum, and told them to wait on the east bank whilst he took two fishing boats with three men in each over to the west.’ Ansigar looked at the man who spoke some more and then carried on the translation: ‘They waited for seven days then one of the boats came back at night with orders to ride north along the river until they met up with the one-handed man.’

‘What’s his name?’ Vespasian asked.

Ansigar asked the question.

‘Gisbert,’ came the reply followed by another stream of the harsh language.

‘When they found Gisbert,’ Ansigar continued, ‘he told them that he had followed a Roman raiding party; what’s more, they were
Batavians, who are their enemies, and he proved it by showing them the body of one that he had killed. He said that they should track them and kill one or two every night but to always allow them to be holding a weapon when they died.’ Ansigar paused as the young man carried on his tale and then repeated it: ‘He said you would always be heading just east of north and they were to put the corpses ahead of you every day. They didn’t understand why but they obeyed him as they would their King. Yesterday Gisbert sent a message to Adgandestrius, in Mattium …’

‘What’s Mattium?’ Vespasian asked.

Ansigar asked the question and the young man looked at Vespasian, frowning quizzically before answering.

‘It’s the chief settlement of the Chatti, to the east of here,’ Ansigar translated. ‘The message was for two hundred men to wait on the northern bank of the river and kill you as you tried to swim it but they stupidly gave away their position by shooting at the patrol. Gisbert then told them that we’d come to kill their King in vengeance for the raid across the Rhenus.’

‘Kill their King? Are you sure?’

Ansigar questioned the man again; he answered, nodding, but with a look of puzzlement still on his face.

‘That’s what he said. He ordered them to charge us; they knew that they wouldn’t win because they normally fight as infantry and dislike fighting mounted, but the King had told them to obey so they had no choice.’

‘Ask him what he thought Gisbert was trying to achieve by sacrificing so many of them.’

‘He can only assume that he wanted to kill as many of us as possible,’ Ansigar said after listening to the answer, ‘so we’d have no chance of crossing the river against the two hundred men on the other side.’

‘He’s done a reasonable job of that,’ Paetus observed. ‘We’re down to just over a hundred and thirty troopers now; we won’t be able to force a crossing against those odds.’

‘Then we’ll follow the river until we find another place to cross,’ Sabinus suggested.

Vespasian looked at the force holding the north bank. ‘They’ll
just keep pace with us. Ansigar, ask him if there’s a bridge anywhere.’

‘He says that there’s one at Mattium,’ Ansigar said after a brief conversation in German. ‘But it is very well guarded.’

‘I’m sure it is. Well, gentlemen, it looks as if we’re fucked; any suggestions?’

‘It seems to me that we either follow the river east and try and sneak across at night, or we storm the bridge, or we turn back.’

Vespasian and Sabinus looked at each other; they both knew what turning back would mean for Sabinus.

‘We’ll build a pyre for the dead,’ Vespasian said, ‘and then go east and see what Fortuna presents us with.’ He looked down at the Chatti captives. ‘Finish them, Ansigar.’

Ansigar took his sword and placed it on the young man’s throat; his eyes widened in terror and he began speaking with urgency. Ansigar lowered his weapon and the captive looked up at Vespasian, nodding furiously.

‘He says that he can help us cross the river,’ Ansigar informed them.

‘Oh really?’ Vespasian was unimpressed. ‘And just how does he think he can do that? Fly us across?’

‘No, he says that the men on the other side will shadow us wherever we go but they won’t cross because they’ll lose too much time in doing so. He says that the river does a large loop to the north and then curves back, about ten miles east of here; if we follow it until the point that it changes direction and then leave its course and head due east we’ll rejoin it again after three miles across country. The men on the other side will have to travel eight miles following the course, but we’ll have time to cross and be away before they catch up with us.’

Vespasian looked at the young man’s terrified eyes. ‘Do you trust him, Ansigar?’

‘There’s only one way to find out, sir.’

CHAPTER VIIII

T
HE THICK SMOKE
of the funeral pyre climbing high into the air was still visible, four miles behind the Batavian column, as they trotted east towards the curve in the river. They kept to a slow pace, saving their horses for the gallop across country that would put sufficient distance between them and the Chatti for a river crossing to be possible. As predicted, the Chatti were shadowing their movement on the northern bank; their silhouettes could be occasionally glimpsed through the trees that lined both sides of the river, just over an arrow’s flight away.

The landscape had become gradually more agricultural; small, enclosed, family settlements of a few huts surrounding a longhouse were dotted around the gently undulating terrain; wood smoke from their cooking fires wafted skywards, occasionally adding a sweet tang to the air. Older men, boys and some women worked the fields, taking little notice of the column unless it came within a mile or so of them, then they would scuttle away to the relative safety of their settlements.

After a couple of hours’ steady progress they came to the top of a grassy hillock; half a mile before them the river swept north to begin its ponderous loop. Its tree-lined course wove a lazy pattern into the distance before disappearing behind a line of small hills that had forced its diversion.

The Chatti captive gabbled excitedly to Ansigar who then turned to Vespasian, Sabinus and Paetus riding behind him. ‘He says this is it. If we keep going straight we can’t miss the river as it loops back round.’

Vespasian glanced over to the north bank; the trees were too thick to see through but he knew that the Chatti were there. ‘We’d better make this quick, then; if they thrash their horses all
the way they can still be at the crossing point a quarter of an hour after us.’

‘Their horses will be blown, though,’ Paetus pointed out.

‘Yeah, but their spears won’t be,’ Magnus grumbled from behind him.

Vespasian ignored the gloomy comment and kicked his horse forward. ‘Let’s get this done.’

The column surged down the gentle slope behind him, hooves thundering and bridles jingling, accelerating along the last half-mile of east–west-flowing river. To their north the occasional flitting shape beyond the trees testified to their shadows keeping pace with them. As the river curved away, Vespasian led the column straight on. He was vaguely aware of some faint shouts from their pursuers as they were forced north away from their quarry; he did not look back but, instead, concentrated on keeping his horse at a gallop that it could sustain for three miles and still be able to swim a river.

The countryside rolled out ahead of them and they began to rise steadily, their mounts forcing their muscles to work harder against gravity as each downward slope led to a longer ascent until they were at the summit of the line of small hills. The great oxbow of the river could be seen in its entirety and Vespasian felt a surge of relief as, directly ahead of him, he saw it return to its original course; the captive had not lied. Then a pall of smoke hovering over a hill on the other side of the river, a mile beyond the curve, made him realise with a jolt that he had also not been completely truthful. The smoke partially concealed a large stockade hilltop town.

‘Ask him what that is,’ Vespasian shouted at Ansigar, knowing in his heart the answer and not liking it one bit.