Soldier of Rome: The Sacrovir Revolt (The Artorian Chronicles) (36 page)

The forum of Augustodunum was a swarm of activity.
Proculus knew the auctions would bring every Roman citizen with a talent to his name within a hundred miles. He recognized a few centurions and tribunes who were looking to increase their wealth and lands on the cheap. Silius himself was overseeing the auctioning of Gallic estates, having already procured a prime piece of real estate for himself. The Legate stood behind a podium, a gavel in his hand. There were other auctions going on as well. Proculus noticed Vitruvius standing with his arms folded, deep in thought.

“Vitruvius, old boy!” he stated with a friendly smack on the shoulder.

His
lesser centurion nodded in reply.

“Here to take part in the raping of the Gallic nobility?”
Proculus asked. He could not help but contain his excitement. His wife Vorena would love nothing more than to have a country estate to escape from the confines of the cities. “So what are you in the market for?”

“Slaves,” Vitruvius replied.
“I figured I can buy some decent stock really cheap and turn them over for a profit when we get home. I may even pick out one or two to keep for myself. It seems the fashion for a centurion to have his own personal attendants.”

“So will you be looking for something practical, or maybe a little more seductive?”
Proculus asked with a wry grin.

Vitruvius
smirked at the question.

“A manservant will be practical, of course.
And if I were to find something that could bring some relief to my loins--not very likely, judging from this lot-she’d still better be a damn good cook!”

Proculus laughed and shook his head.

“Yes, and I see that some of the men from the ranks have pooled their resources together to try and acquire themselves a slave or two. Well, if they want someone to clean out the section bays and cook their meals for them, so be it.”

“
Quite,” Vitruvius said. “So what about you, you’re not in the market for more slaves are you?”

“I’m good on slaves,” Proculus replied with a
shake of his head. “I’m after land. I still have quite a bit of my winnings left from your little gladiatorial exhibition.”

Vitruvius snorted.
He found it odd that everyone but him had made a fortune of his killing Sacrovir’s prize gladiator. At the time he thought it would be tempting the fates too much if he were to have bet on himself.

Proculus left his friend to his business and walked over to where Silius was getting ready to start to
the land auction. He was determined to get Vorena that country estate. He thought perhaps he would pick up a pair of horses as an extra. He also knew they would need someone to run the estate while Vorena was in Rome. He then remembered Diana.

Diana Procula was a distant
relative of his; his father and her grandfather being second cousins. Whereas her grandfather was a very influential Roman magistrate, Proculus’ father had been a simple stone mason; and he himself was a mere soldier who had risen from the ranks. Still, he and Diana had shared a close bond over the years. He was nearly old enough to be her father, and as such had become a type of paternal figure to both her and her sister.

Diana’s sister, Claudia, was in a long-term engagement with
the Tribune Pontius Pilate; a good match for both families. Not that Proculus had faired too poorly in the marriage game. After all, his wife was the granddaughter of the famous Centurion Lucius Vorenus, who had distinguished himself during Julius Caesar’s Gallic campaigns. As a boy, Proculus had lived to hear stories about the man that Caesar himself had made famous in his Commentaries. Even after more than seventy years since the end of the Gallic conquest, the exploits of Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo still set the standard for valor expected of a Roman soldier, particularly those of the Centurionate. Centurion Pullo had had the misfortune of siding with Pompey Magnus during the civil war; and though he was later pardoned, he slipped into obscurity. On the other hand, his friend and rival Vorenus had retired as Centurion Primus Pilus of Legio XI. Vorenus’ son, Lucius the Younger, had been able to channel his father’s fame into boosting his own career which helped him to later become
Tribune of the Plebs
.

“The auction will now begin!”
Silius’ bellow and the bang of the gavel brought Proculus back to the present. He took a deep breath and listened to the details of the first estate being auctioned. He was determined to find a country home befitting the granddaughter of Vorenus!

Artorius
was surprised that he had been singled out to be decorated. He had rallied enough troops to repel a horde of Turani rebels; however, he did not feel as if he had done anything extraordinary. Lives may have been saved, but they were not by his actions alone.

“Sergeant Artorius,”
Macro’s shouting interrupted his thoughts,
“Legionaries Magnus, Praxus, Decimus, Valens, and Carbo . . . post!”
The century was in parade formation in the otherwise empty square at the Augustodunum University. The section stepped out of formation and marched up to their centurion. Next to Macro, Optio Flaccus stood bearing several ornate embossed discs bearing the profile image of a man wearing a Greek helmet. They were about palm size, the same as a campaign medal.

“The elimination of an enemy of Rome brings distinct honor to the men responsible,” Macro said.
“Julius Florus was a traitor to the Gauls, and to the Senate and people of Rome. His death saved countless lives and stifled further rebellion. Therefore, by order of Gaius Silius, Legate and Governor General of Germania Inferior, you men are awarded the
Florian Crest
. The Florian Crest is a special award given to those responsible for Julius Florus’ demise. Let all bear witness to your initiative, determination, and valor.” Macro then nodded to Optio Flaccus who handed him the medals. Macro handed one to Artorius with his left hand, clasping his right with the other.

“You and your men are a tribute to the Valeria Legion,” he said to Artorius in a low voice.
As soon as the last medal was awarded, Macro stepped back and rendered a salute to the legionaries, who returned the courtesy to their centurion.

The Second Century erupted in a serious of voracious cheers and accolades.
Besides Artorius and his section, Julius Indus and his two cavalrymen were also awarded the Florian Crest. It was, indeed, a distinct honor that only nine men would ever receive.

Kiana agreed to ride with Alasdair on his journey home.
His father had had to stay in Augustodunum in order to see to the formalities of paying the ransom. As they rode in silence down the road, they saw a slave caravan moving down the perpendicular road heading south.

“Dear gods,” Alasdair said quietly.

“What is it?” Kiana asked. She was not aware of the sentence passed on those who failed to pay their ransoms or were found to be former slaves or criminals. 

Alasdair spurred his horse and rode towards the caravan.
Roman auxiliaries, mounted on horses, flanked the long train of prisoners; their menacing presence preventing Alasdair from getting any closer. Kiana rode up beside him, her eyes widening as she saw some of the faces that peered out from behind the bars of their wheeled cages. Though most were the ragged countenances of thieves and slaves, she recognized one or two who were friends of Farquhar’s.

“Alasdair, what is happening to them?” she asked.

The young man swallowed hard.
“They are the ones whose families refused to ransom them.  They are being sent to the mines in Mauretania.”

“They are slaves?” Kiana was in shock. After the suffering and horror she had witnessed, this just added salt to the wounds. It was the final, and by far most brutal, retribution to come from the Romans.

“Once nobles with a future full of hope, promise, and prosperity,” he replied.
“Now they are but slaves, to be sold and disposed of at the will of their new masters. The sulfur mines will break them. It would have been better had they died in battle.”

Kiana turned her gaze towards Alasdair.
His face was set hard, and she could not help but notice that he somehow seemed much older; as though he had suddenly aged from a young boy into an old man.

“Come,” she said, “let us leave this despair behind. You still have a future, Alasdair. You may not have the life of privilege and wealth you had before, but at least you are alive and
free
. Farquhar would have wanted you to live life once again.”

Alasdair turned towards her and smiled weakly.

“Farquhar was, indeed, a lucky man, to have had you in his life. He loved you so much.” He then took a deep breath and exhaled hard through his nose. “Go home, Kiana. Know that I will always cherish our friendship; however, this journey I must finish alone.” With that he turned and slowly rode away. 

Kiana did not protest as she watched him.
Once he was out of sight, she turned and rode back towards her home.  She had stayed with and comforted Alasdair as much as possible.  It had been done out of the love she still bore Farquhar. The two had been like brothers.  She then made a vow to herself that she would visit his grave on the anniversary of his death, placing one flower on the small monument his father had erected.  Though she was still but a young girl, Kiana could not help but feel as if she, too, had been aged considerably by the Sacrovir Revolt.

Chapter XVIII: The New Assignment and Indus’ Horse

***

Silius sat with his hands behind his head, eyes closed.
The ransoming of the prisoners was finally complete, those that remained on their way to enslavement in the mines of Mauretania, and the execution of the captured leaders of the rebellion had also been accomplished. Broehain had been allowed to be ransomed along with the prisoners. However, the rest of the rebel leaders had been crucified in full view of Augustodunum. He was physically and mentally exhausted, the rush of the full effects of the rebellion and its aftermath coming down on him. Suddenly, there was a knock at his door, and Calvinus walked in. Silius did not bother to open his eyes.

“Sorry to bother you, but I had to bring this to your attention,” the
master centurion stated, a rolled parchment in his hand.

“What is it?”
Silius asked with his eyes still closed.

“The
cohort from Lugdunum is being recalled to their garrison station, their three-year tour in the region being complete. I took the liberty of looking at the rotation schedule for the Lugdunum garrison, and we happen to be next.”

“Damn it, I had forgotten about that,” the
legate replied as he leaned forward and rested his forehead on his hand. He figured a spell at the bathhouse and brothel would do him good, except he was too exhausted to even leave his quarters. “I remember looking at that before we were distracted by the rebellion. We are fairly close to Lugdunum as it is, so whichever cohort we dispatch may as well head straight there from here. No sense in them even going all the way back to Cologne.”

“I agree,” Calvinus asserted.
“Lugdunum is a rather posh assignment. I think it should fall upon whichever cohort distinguished itself the most on this campaign.”

“You are not taking the First,” Silius remarked wryly.

Calvinus only laughed at that.

“No, I did not mean my own cohort. Rather, I was thinking we should send the Third. They are the ones who took out Florus and brought Indus’ cavalry back with them. They also distinguished themselves during the main battle at Augustodunum.” 

Silius nodded his consent.

“Very well, inform Proculus to get his men ready to move to Lugdunum. That is, if you haven’t done so already!” Calvinus could only grin at that.

Silius knew full-well that his
master centurion had already given Proculus his orders, and he wouldn't have been surprised at all if the Third was already on the march. His trust in Calvinus’ judgment was absolute, and if he had said the Third Cohort needed to go to Lugdunum, then the Third Cohort needed to go to Lugdunum.

Indeed, the Third had been on the march for several hours by the time Calvinus informed Silius of their new assignment. Lugdunum was approximately four or five days march away, and the soldiers of the Third Cohort were looking forward to new horizons.

“Lugdunum, now that is the place for us!”
Carbo asserted. “Warmer weather, prettier ladies . . . Valens eyes lit up at Carbo’s last statement.

“Come again?” he asked.

“What he means is you won’t have to dip your wick into the vaginal wart holes of trashy frontier whores anymore,” Decimus answered.

“Decimus, you are eloquent as always,” Artorius
rolled his eyes. “I have not heard what kind of billets they have for us, though.”

“I already checked into that,” Decimus answered proudly.
As the section’s resident gossip, he took pride in rooting out information and had an alarmingly vast circle of sources. “It would seem there are blocks of flats at one end of town that the state purchased for our use. It seemed more practical than having to build us an entire fort. The only things they had to build were the drill halls, as well as an extra bathhouse.”

On the fourth day of the march, the Third Cohort chanced upon the same slave traders that Kiana and Alasdair had had the misfortune of coming across. Two young lads were being thrown to the ground by their merciless captors. One was sobbing incessantly while the other just lay limp. This fellow was being whipped by a burley slaver who wore nothing but a pair of breaches and a rag on his head.

“Get up you worthless little shit!” the man spat.
He thrashed the lad thrice more with his barbed whip before kicking him hard in the ribs, which gave a sickening crunch. He then stood looking dumbfounded.

“B
ugger it, I think this one’s dead,” he said to his companion, who was struggling with the other boy.

The rest of their caravan kept creeping along, both slavers and their quarry paying no heed to what was going on behind them.

“Just leave him to rot,” the other slaver retorted. “Meanwhile, I’m going to use this one for a bit of sport!” A deviant sneer crossed his face.

The lad, his own eyes full of terror, bit the man hard on the forearm.
As the slaver screamed in pain, the young prisoner used the last of his strength to attempt to run from the scene. He was delirious with fear and had no idea he was heading straight for the column of Roman soldiers.

“Hey, you!”
the slaver screamed, as his companion laughed at his plight.
“Somebody stop him!”

Proculus called the column to a halt as the newly liberated slave stumbled towards them.
A nearby legionary dropped his pack and javelins, turned and belted the young man hard across the face with the bottom edge of his shield. The lad fell to the ground, stunned and unable to regain his bearing. Proculus rode over to where the lad lay as the slaver came running up to him. The centurion’s senses were assailed by the sight and stench of the man. He was overweight and scraggly in appearance; his body odor was strong, and Proculus wondered if the man had ever had a bath.

“Nice one,” the slaver remarked as he stooped with his hands on his knees, his breath coming in heaving gasps.
“Thought this one was going to get away before I could have my way with him.”

Proculus dismounted his horse and walked over to the man.
As the slaver started to rise up, Proculus punched him hard in the mouth, sending him sprawling.

“Idiot!”
the centurion shouted. “You almost let a prisoner of war escape just so you could satisfy your sick carnal lust!”

The slaver started to push himself up to his feet when Proculus stomped him on the side of the face with his hobnailed sandals.
The young prisoner was now lying on his stomach, his face filled with joy and hope. The scowl on the centurion’s face diminished any hopes he may have had.

Just then a pair of auxiliary c
avalrymen galloped up to them, one of whom saluted Proculus.

“And where
in the
hell
were you when this piss-ant lost his prisoners?” the centurion barked, the scowl never leaving his face.

“Beg your pardon
, sir,” one of the troopers replied. “We’ve been chasing down the others that this jackal let out. He and his partner up there decide they want to play with a couple of the young nobles. So they go and open the cage, and sure enough three more manage to escape into the woods! We’ve spent the last hour hunting them down.”

“Any get away from you?”
Vitruvius asked as he rode up on his horse.

“No
, sir,” the cavalryman replied with a shake of his head. “Unfortunately, we had to slay the lot of them. A mercy, really; these are all headed for the sulfur mines.”

“Yes
, we know,” Proculus replied with a dismissive wave. He then glared at the slaver, who was now cowering with his hands over his face. The centurion smashed his foot into the man’s face once again, eliciting a chuckle from Vitruvius, as well as the auxiliary troopers.

“I want this scum and his companion
lashed for their gross incompetence,” Proculus continued. “Take the prisoner back with you and see to it that he makes it to the mines alive and unspoiled.”

“Right away
, sir,” the trooper acknowledged as the prisoner let out a series of despairing cries.

“No!
Please do not make me go back! I am a nobleman; I can pay whatever you want! Please, I beg you!”
He came at Proculus, his arms outstretched piteously.

Proculus swallowed hard and remembered why the young man had been sentenced to the mines of Maur
etania. The centurion punched him in the mouth, sending him tumbling over the slaver. The lad lay their weeping in sorrow.

“
Lost, I am lost,” he sobbed, his face buried in the grass.

“Yes
, you are,” Proculus replied as he stood over him. “Perhaps you will make sounder decisions in the next life.” With that he gruffly pulled the young man up by the hair and threw him towards the cavalrymen, one of whom prodded the lad with his lance back towards the caravan. Proculus then kicked the slaver in the small of his back, forcing him to scamper to his feet.

The other auxiliary trooper saluted once again before following his quarry back to the slave caravan.

“Well, that was something I could have done without seeing,” Magnus muttered under his breath, as the column continued its march.

“Those sick fucks must be desperate for some really good sport,” Valens observed.

“And to think we thought
you
had low standards!” Carbo snorted.

“
At least my standards never involved young boys,” Valens retorted.

“A few days in the mines and he will wish he was back to being that slaver’s little
play thing,” Artorius observed, watching as the prisoner limped along, the lance of the cavalryman never far from his back.

“Are the mines really that bad?”
Gavius asked.

Most of the section grunted in reply.

“From what Flaccus said, they are far worse,” Artorius said. “The sulfur burns your eyes until you go blind from it. Not that it matters because once you’re down there you’ve seen the last of the sun. The very air you breathe is a poisonous fume. You are given just enough food and water to be kept alive. Three months is about the longest most survive, although I’m sure there are exceptions.”

“Such as?”
Gavius persisted.

The other
legionaries were gazing intently on their decanus, curious as to what else he may have heard.

“There are a few cases where a slave will show the intestinal fortitude to survive for years down there.
Sometimes their masters will take pity upon them and retire them to lesser duties on a farm; though more often than not they are blind and completely mad by then.”

The Gallic countryside continued to roll past them as the column made its way towards Lugdunum.
The scenes of activity from the villages they marched through would have made one forget that the province had recently been in the grips of rebellion. The peoples encountered were mostly indifferent to the legionaries; neither fearful like the barbarians across the Rhine, nor openly friendly like the Batavians. Few of the Gauls were old enough to remember the conquest of Caesar; indeed, most regarded being a Roman province as beneficial. Roman architecture influenced even the smallest of Gallic villages. Artorius found it odd to see a bathhouse or rudimentary aqueduct amongst the thatched huts. There were even shrines dedicated to the Roman gods dispersed throughout the region.

As the cohort marched into Lugdunum, they noticed a number of tents erected just on the outskirts. The outgoing cohort had already vacated their billets and were living in tents for the few days it would take for them to relinquish control. They found a sign posted outside of a renovated tavern that read:

Cohort VIII, Legio VIII Augusta

Acilius Aviola, Centurion Pilus Prior

“Here we are then,” Proculus announced
, as he dismounted his horse. He and the centurions entered the tavern to find it had been modified into a type of Principia. Stairs led to rooms upstairs, and the entire bottom floor had been partitioned off into a series of offices and other rooms. There was a flurry of activity going on, seeing as the cohort was getting ready to leave and return to their fortress at Poetovio in Pannonia.

“Ah, good you have arrived!” a boisterous voice said behind them.

They turned to see an older
centurion walk in the main door. He had just removed his helmet, revealing a head that was sparse in hair, and that which he had was completely gray.

“I am Centurion Aviola,
Commander of the Eighth Cohort, Eighth Augusta,” he said as he stuck out his hand.

“Valerius Proculus, Third Cohort, Twentieth Valeria,” Proculus replied, accepting the man’s hand.
“This is quite the setup you fellas have here.”

Aviola
shrugged at the observation.

“We’ve had a pretty good run here,” he replied.
“Things got a little anxious when we had to rush north to help you guys put down Sacrovir’s rebellion, though. That was the first action any of us had seen in years.”