Arthur Invictus (3 page)
Authors: Paul Bannister
Diocletian sorely missed his palace and its luxuries. His campaigns against the Sarmatians across the Danube, against the tribes of the Tirol and Black Forest and of the pesky Persians who had threatened Syria had kept him in the field for several long years. To spread the load, and put out fires elsewhere in his eastern half of the empire, he had appointed the onetime herdsman Galerius as his junior Caesar. Now, he was beginning to have some doubts about the man the troops mockingly called Armentarius, or ‘The Shepherd’ because, the emperor was finding out, he was an especially cruel and violent man.
Diocletian
was not queasy about spilling blood. He came from a line of emperors who had put 600,000 humans to death for entertainment purposes. Trajan himself, one of the Five Good Emperors, once held a 123-day circus that saw 5,000 people and 11,000 animals slaughtered in the arena. Reports that Galerius was merely cruel meant little. A few limbs amputated, a few eyes gouged out, a number of idle or mutinous soldiers flogged to death was normal currency in that place and time.
But
what Diocletian’s spies reported was that the Caesar kept a herd of feral pigs and would feed victims to them for his amusement. The prisoners always knew what was coming: they had their teeth knocked out and hair chopped off because the pigs’ digestive systems didn’t cope well with them. Some wretches, for extra amusement, were taken to the arena, publicly blinded, then sewn into animal skins so they could crawl but not run from the carnivorous swine, others were skinned alive and covered in salt. It was all for the emperor’s amusement, and to create an example for his troops and the peoples they conquered.
It
worked. The Shepherd had cowed a rebellious flock of Carpiani and marched the entire tribe down the shores of the Adriatic, across Macedonia and into Pannonia, where he forcibly resettled them. He had also inflicted a great defeat on the Persians, an especially sweet victory as they had overwhelmed his Roman force the previous year. After that loss, Diocletian had expressed his displeasure and shown his teeth by making the defeated Galerius walk a mile alongside his chariot before he would speak to him.
He
made it up to me well though, Diocletian thought, considering the massive plunder Galerius brought back from the Persians, and the general had settled King Narses’ nonsense probably for decades by taking all his land west of the Tigris.
But,
plunder and territory gained or not, Diocletian was unhappy to be sleeping in his campaign tent on the Danube when his magnificent palace at Split was standing empty. These barbarians, he thought, why do they never learn that we will subdue them over and over again? It was the same, he thought, with those Christians.
I’ve
been tolerant of them for a long time, he thought, I let them into my armies, took them as servants in my palaces. They’ve had prosperity and security while I’ve been emperor, even been allowed to build their churches in my cities, but they turned against me when all I wanted to do was restore the old ways and glories of Rome.
Diocletian
thought back to the visit he’d had from Galerius after the palace in Nicomedia caught fire. A Christian plot, Galerius told him, it was not caused by a lightning strike at all. The Jesus followers needed to be disciplined, they were always making trouble. That came on the heels of the imperial priests’ complaints that when they sacrificed to the gods, the Christian officers in his guard could be seen crossing themselves. It changed the way the auguries could be read, it polluted the pagan ceremonies, they said.
The
emperor took it seriously. He himself was the reincarnation of Jupiter, and was a being so exalted that all who came into his court must kneel to kiss the hem of his robe. He was, too, a believer in reading the future, and if these Christians were a profanity to the true gods, they should be curbed. He ordered more auguries taken, and the oracles were unanimous: the Christians did indeed bode ill for the imperial purple and the gods should be shown that Diocletian did not favour them.
He
ordered their churches pulled down. A Christian called Eutius who the emperor thought must have been eager for martyrdom defiantly tore down the imperial edict and paid for it by being tortured then burned to death.
Diocletian
next ordered all court officials to sacrifice to the old gods and to consume the meat the pagans sacrificed. Some of the Jesus followers resisted, so the emperor ordered all Christian bishops, deacons, priests and exorcists arrested. Those who did not recant were executed, and Galerius was the most enthusiastic of those who persecuted them, employing some of old Nero’s practices of coating his victims in wax and using them as human torches, or sewing them into blood-reeking animal skins before turning starving wolves loose on them.
The
bloodletting went on across Greece, Palestine, Syria and Turkey, Diocletian remembered. How could people be so stubborn? Now he was facing more rebels on the Danube. These were not religious fanatics, just over-ambitious war lords. It would not be too long before he had them crushed under his yoke and he could return to his palace on the Adriatic. That would be enough. He thought he’d leave it to Maximian to subdue those Britons and bring that
colonia
back to Rome. It was all so tiring…
Diocletian’s
fellow emperor, Maximian, did not think it tiring at all. A brutal, coarse soldier known for forcing the wives of his subordinates to have humiliating sex with him, he was working eagerly and hard to subdue the Alemanni along the Rhine so he could return to Britain and execute the usurper Arthur who had stolen that
colonia
for himself.
Forum
Hadriani was too crowded, so Maximian ordered a fleet of barges built in the secondary shipyards of the nearby rivers Meuse and Scheldt and was stockpiling grain and military supplies there for his planned invasion of Britain. He vowed he would stamp so hard on the Rhine barbarians that they would be too cowed to rise against Rome for a generation.
This
time, he would not have to march away from a siege which had been certain to bring Arthur before him, servile and kneeling in chains, to watch as he brutalized then beheaded that blonde witch he kept around him. He would go to Britain and gut the bastard.
There
would be no mercy for this rebel. Maximian forgot everything except a grudge and he had a longstanding one against Arthur. In Rome a decade or more ago, the big Serbian had seen Arthur as a rival for a woman mosaic artist after whom he lusted and the two men had come to hate each other. Three times now, Maximian had been able to almost taste Arthur’s capture, three times the Briton had escaped the Serb’s clutches.
Once,
at the sack of a Belgic citadel, Arthur had been cornered inside the town until the undermined walls collapsed. He had slipped away from the slighted fortress and into the Ardennes forest to safety while an enraged Maximian had crucified half the garrison.
When
the Roman legions had forced the surrender of Arthur’s Gallic sea base at Bononia, the Briton had already sailed away; and when Maximian and his army had finally trapped Arthur inside the ancient earthwork Caros’ Fort in west Britain, the Roman had been forced to lift the siege so that he could deal with serious invasion threats to Rome.
This
time, this time, he vowed, I’ll take the bastard. I’ll kill him so painfully, he’ll wish I was Pollio and was only throwing him to the conger eels; he’ll even wish I was giving him to Galerius’ feral pigs to eat. And that, Maximian thought suddenly, might provide the most amusement. I’ll feed him to the pigs. Alive.
We were dining in Roman style, semi-reclining on three couches in the new
tricinium
Guinevia had ordered constructed. I disliked the practice of eating lying on one’s side. It was a strain, took too long and invariably involved guests, so I had to make polite conversation while eating. Guinevia, on the other hand, loved it, and found this irritating Roman habit charmingly civilized. For myself, lunch was the best meal, because nobody joined you for that, I could bolt down some fuel and get on with important matters.
And
right now, I had important matters indeed on my mind. I was planning a raid on Maximian’s shipbuilding operations. My spy ships, their hulls and sails painted sea green as camouflage, had crept close inshore of the estuaries of the Rhone and Meuse under cover of dark, and had slipped observation parties ashore for 24 hours before returning to collect them. They had all come back with sobering news.
The
Romans had learned from our foray with fire ships that had destroyed much of their previous invasion force’s vessels, and had sealed the rivers with floating wooden booms of huge logs chained end to end. Our scouts reported that guard boats regularly rowed the lengths of the booms and that shore batteries had been constructed to defend against any attack on them. There were signal towers and several small outpost garrisons, too. We would not easily, they reported, pass those booms to get to the shipyards upriver.
I
chewed my lip. Maximian was no fool, and if he had guarded against a seaward attack, he likely had good land defences, too. My first thought had been to send a raiding party ashore from further down the coast to damage the shipyards and the fleet that was being built there. If, as I suspected, the yards were well-guarded, that game might not be worth the candle. I could see my attack party failing and being butchered.
My
train of thought was in full flow, and I stood from the couch, made my apologies to a surprised Guinevia and her perfumed guests and hurried to my administrative chamber, calling for Grabelius the cavalry commander and Grimr, the big blond Suehan sea raider who had become my best admiral. I quickly limned in my ideas for them: if I couldn’t attack with force overland or from the sea, maybe the option would be to attack from upriver, and sail into the shipyards from the inland side, using the wide rivers as our highway into the heart of the enemy camp…
Once
more, I sent out orders to contact our Belgic spies. They could infiltrate the shipyards, report what they could observe for themselves, talk to whores and wine shop owners, to slaves and locals and to the allies we had among the subjugated tribes of the region. From them, I wanted detailed maps of the shipyard arrangement: the dry docks and locks, the garrison buildings, walls, storage, ropewalks, carpenter and sailmaker facilities. I want to know the strength of the ebb and flow of the tides, and exact times and duration of the water’s rise and fall on certain future dates.
We
needed good information about the geography and terrain, the approaches, escape routes, topography, likely weather patterns. I wanted to know about the quality of the military, their leadership, weaponry, outpost forts, routines, lines of communication and even the attitudes of the locals to their occupying masters.
And,
importantly, I needed to know about the availability of galleys and sailing ships miles upriver of those shipyards, as vessels we could commandeer to carry us into the heart of the enemy. This most vital information must be gathered in utmost secrecy, or we would find ourselves trapped and crucified. And I needed to know where the Romans kept their military vessels and how vulnerable they were to capture when docked in their base.
I
had to carry out this operation with only a small number of men. I could not hope to land 100 men and march them across Gaul unnoticed, but I could lead a couple of dozen on the raid, if we split into two or three discreet groups. I had an idea how we could use so few men to create great havoc, and I knew who could help me make the mission a success. I wrote a long and secret letter to my old shipmaster in Forum Hadriani. The messengers went out, and I turned with a sigh to the administrative matters that were piled up as always.
This
day I was dealing with punishments. By custom, we employed the proven Roman methods of discipline. Any soldier who wounded or killed a comrade was subject to the death penalty. Cowardice, insubordination, conspiracy, desertion, even simply entering our camp over the wall to avoid the prefects or guards, all were punishable by hanging, beheading, death at the stake or consignment to the arena.
This
night, I had seven soldiers from the same tent unit in chains for the death of the eighth man of their squad. He was a persistent thief, and should have been brought to me for stealing from his own companions, but they, enraged, had given him such a beating he had died of his head wounds.
I
had no compunction. All seven must die, and I decided to do it by decimation. Usually this punishment was meant for a cohort or century whose members had committed a capital offence. Then, every tenth man would be beaten to death by his comrades. In this case, just the members of a tent unit were guilty. I ordered a century from the offenders’ own cohort to report at dawn, and then to administer the punishment on the perpetrators while the whole legion witnessed their deaths.
Two
legionaries were also on the disciplinary list, charged with rape. The case seemed proved, so I ordered their noses to be cut off. A horse thief was taken to have his hands amputated, a lazy soldier who was obviously not physically fit I ordered to parade outside the orderly tent for three days dressed shamefully only in his tunic. He was to exercise hard, and be tested in a month. If he failed that test, he would be flogged.
A
handful of minor miscreants got extra duties, were ordered to forgo their wheat rations and got small fines levied. One miscreant who arrived before me bruised and battered was charged with vomiting on the centurion’s chamber floor while drunk. I asked sharply how he had come to be so bruised. “He fell from the window, lord,” said the decurion, smoothly.
I
looked at the man. “And how many times did he fall from the window?” I asked in my silkiest tones. “Dismissed.”
I
turned to the next piece of administrative chores, sanitation. The subject was important to me. I knew that when an army camped in the same place for too long, men caught the bloody flux, and Myrddin had told me he suspected it had to do with human waste improperly disposed of. Keeping my men healthy was my concern, so our permanent camp at Chester had drains, good gutters and proper sewers.
I
remembered from my visit to Rome that the Senate had ordered a halt to taking the city’s drinking water from the Tiber, which was also their sewer, and instead brought fresh water from miles away, transporting it into the city in aqueducts. They also said that cabbage kept the plague at bay, and I had put that into the army’s diet, to some grumbling.
Importantly,
I had recently ordered the barracks latrines to be upgraded and the new toilets could seat a whole century of 80 men at one time. The latrines’ stone benches with their row of keyhole-shaped openings were set above a constant stream of running water which flushed the waste into sewers.
I
was proud of the troughs in front of the benches, which also had a flow of clean water, and were used by the men to wash the Kalymnos Greek sponges they used for their personal hygiene. I scribbled a note to commend and reward the engineers who had so quickly completed the improvements. Now, I had to take a look at food supplies…