Vespasian: Tribune of Rome (42 page)

Asinius looked in the direction of the noise that was now unmistakably the sound of battle.

‘I shouldn’t worry about that, Asinius,’ Poppaeus assured him. ‘It’s just another raid by the few rebels that are left up in the hills, nothing serious.’

‘Very well. In recognition of your glorious recent defeat of the Thracian rebels, the Senate has voted you triumphal honours, which the Emperor has been pleased to confirm.’ Asinius paused as a Poppaeus gave him a self-satisfied smile. ‘The Emperor has requested that you return to Rome immediately to receive the honours.’

‘Return to Rome immediately?’ Poppaeus exploded. ‘Why?’

‘Your report stated that the rebellion was crushed. A little premature, I would say,’ Asinius said, indicating the ever-growing noise from beyond the camp. ‘The Emperor felt that there was evidently nothing left for you to do here, so he has ordered you return to Rome. Pomponius Labeo is to take over your command, with immediate effect.’

‘Pomponius Labeo replaces me! You have done this,’ Poppaeus spat, pointing an accusatory finger at Asinius.

‘Me? I am only the messenger, delivering the good news on my way to my province.’ It was Asinius’ turn to look smug. ‘I have no power over the Emperor’s or the Senate’s wishes. I rather think that it was your exaggerated report that has caused your good fortune.’

Poppaeus clenched his fists and looked for a moment as if he would strike Asinius.

Corbulo’s sudden arrival broke the tension.

‘Sir!’ he said breathlessly. ‘Thank the gods that I’ve found you. Our defensive wall is under attack in four or five places, and has been breached in at least one. It seems that the Thracians have thrown all their remaining troops at us in a final bid to break out.’

Poppaeus looked aghast. ‘Have the men fall in. Senior officers to the praetorium immediately.’

Corbulo snapped a salute and ran out.

‘Tribune, centurion, return to your legion,’ Poppaeus barked, turning towards the exit.

‘It’s too late to really earn those honours, general,’ Asinius purred. ‘You have been relieved of command.’

Poppaeus stopped in the doorway and gave him a black look. ‘Bollocks to your orders! We’ll resume this conversation later.’

He swept out as the bucinae sounded the call to arms throughout the camp.

Asinius shrugged. ‘Disobeying a direct order from the Emperor and the Senate – I do hope he knows what he’s doing. It will be an interesting meeting later.’

He quickly dismissed Faustus and his two men, and then summoned the rest of his lictors. They were not long in arriving.

‘However, this attack is an extraordinary piece of luck,’ Asinius said, beaming at Vespasian. ‘Get Magnus in here.’

Magnus appeared from the sleeping area, having been relieved of his guard duty by two burly lictors.

‘Are we off now, sir? It sounds like we’ve got a bit of a fight on our hands.’

‘You’re staying with me, Magnus,’ Asinius ordered. ‘I have an errand that will suit your skills admirably.’

Vespasian cut off Magnus’ protest. ‘I’ll be fine, my friend; I don’t need you to always nursemaid me around the battlefield. Do as he asks.’

‘If you say so,’ Magnus replied gruffly.

‘I do.’

‘What do you want done, sir?’ Magnus asked grudgingly.

‘I want any letters that link Poppaeus to Sejanus. With the camp almost empty, apart from the slaves, now is the perfect time to break into the praetorium.’

V
ESPASIAN AND
M
AGNUS
stepped out into the night. It had started to rain. The bellowed orders of the centurions and optiones forming up their men echoed around the camp. The Via Principalis and Via Praetoria were full of legionaries, standing in centuries, buckling on armour and securing helmets, some still chewing on the last mouthfuls of their interrupted dinner. Most of the men knew their places, having been through the drill many times before; it was only the new arrivals who suffered the beatings from the centurions’ vine sticks as they struggled to find their stations in the torch-washed shadows of the camp.

‘Break into the fucking praetorium,’ Magnus grumbled. ‘It’s easy for him to say, but how the fuck am I meant to do that?’

‘His personal correspondence will be locked in a chest in his sleeping area at the back, so cut a hole in the rear of the tent and you should be right there,’ Vespasian suggested.

‘Then I’ve got to break open the chest.’

‘Take a crowbar.’

‘You’re as bad as Asinius, but there’s one problem that neither of you have thought about: how will I know which letters are from Sejanus? I can’t read.’

Vespasian stopped still. ‘You’re joking?’

‘I’m not.’

‘Why didn’t you say?’

‘I told you ages ago. Anyway it didn’t occur to me that it would be a problem until just now.’

The senior officers had started to file out of the praetorium. Vespasian shook his head. ‘I’ve got to go and report to Pomponius. Just take anything that has the imperial seal on it or is signed with a name beginning with the letter “S”. That’s the squiggly one that looks a bit like a snake.’

‘That’s a great help, that is. This is going to be a fuck-up.’

On the opposite side of the Via Principalis a tent flap flew open. Four figures emerged into the torchlight; three wore the uniform of the Praetorian Guard. The fourth was in civilian clothes; his hair fell to his shoulders.

‘Hasdro,’ Vespasian muttered under his breath.

The four men crossed to the praetorium and entered without even acknowledging the sentries.

‘Fucking great, now the place is crawling with Praetorians. What do I do now?’

‘I don’t know, just do your best. I’ll see you later. Good luck.’

‘Yeah, and you.’ Magnus slapped Vespasian on the shoulder.

Vespasian crossed the road, weaving through the centuries that were by now formed up ready to move out. He pushed through the IIII Scythica’s public horses, waiting outside the legion’s command tent to be issued to those officers requiring them, and slipped into the briefing just before Pomponius returned from the praetorium.

The assembled officers snapped to attention as their legate entered the tent.

‘At ease, gentlemen,’ Pomponius said, passing through the group. At the far end of the tent he turned to address them, resting his ample behind on the edge of his desk. ‘The bastards have finally plucked up the courage to fight.’ His red, jowly face broke into an excited, piggy-eyed grin. ‘We are to hold the wall to the right-hand side of the gate; the Fifth Macedonica will be on the left. The auxiliary
cohorts will cover our flanks. No special orders; just react to circumstances and kill the lot of them. We need to move fast, so return to your units. Dismissed! Tribune Vespasian, get a horse and stay with me, you will act as my runner.’

Vespasian sat waiting on his public horse as Pomponius was helped up on to his mount. The rain had increased to a steady downpour, inveigling its way under armour, soaking tunics next to warm skin; steam from thousands of wet, sweating men replaced the smoke in the air from the cooking fires that the rain had doused. A steady series of grating screeches, twangs and thumps indicated that, despite the wet conditions, the artillery in the towers facing the attack had opened up. They fired iron bolts and rounded rocks blindly over the fortifications in the general direction of the enemy, knowing that only in the morning light would they be able to gauge just how successful they had been.

Poppaeus and Corbulo appeared out of the praetorium and swiftly mounted their waiting horses. Poppaeus raised his arm dramatically and threw it forward. A cornu blasted out the six deep, sonorous notes of ‘Advance’. Around the camp the call was repeated by each cohort’s cornicen. The gates on three sides of the camp swung open, the signiferi dipped their standards twice and the lead cohorts began to move forward at the double.

‘Pomponius, follow me,’ Poppaeus ordered, kicking his horse forward and accelerating past the columns of waiting legionaries. Vespasian raced after the command group, out of the camp and towards the defensive wall.

The Thracian attack was concentrated on a mile-wide front, centred on the gates. Despite the rain the wooden ramparts were on fire in several places, silhouetting tiny figures in life-and-death struggles in the sputtering light. In two places, to the right of the
gate, there were bulges in the line where the Thracians had breached the wall and the two hard-pressed defending cohorts had been forced to use a couple of precious centuries to contain the breakthrough.

Poppaeus galloped up to the gate, dismounted and clambered up the steps up to the parapet. The wooden walls resounded with the thwack, thwack, thwack of repeated slingshot and arrow hits. The centurion commanding met him with a salute. Behind him his over-stretched men were running to and fro desperately pushing ladders away from the wall, hacking at ropes slung over the breastwork and hefting pila into the massed ranks below.

‘Report, centurion,’ Poppaeus ordered brusquely, shouting to make himself heard over the combined din of battle and rain.

‘Sir! They came out of nowhere about a half-hour ago. They must have ambushed our forward patrols as we received no warning.’ He flinched slightly as a slingshot fizzed past his ear. ‘They’ve filled in the trench with brushwood and corpses in six places and managed to get to the wall. They’ve torn down a couple of sections of it with grappling irons, and set a few more on fire with oil. We’ve been too thinly stretched to be able to do much more than contain them.’

Sheet lightning flashed across the sky, illuminating for an instant the damage done to the defences.

‘Well done,’ Poppaeus shouted, realising that they had mobilised just in time. ‘Get back to it; relief is on its way.’ He called down to Pomponius, who waited below him at the foot of the steps: ‘Legate, order four of your cohorts to reinforce the two on the wall to the right of the gate; then form two up here behind the gate, ready for a sortie under my command . . .’

A double crack of thunder burst above them, forcing him to pause as it reverberated around the mountains, its many echoes returning with diminishing vigour until he was able to continue.

‘The final two cohorts I want stationed behind the wall, just beyond the main attack. Have them issued with planks to get over the trench, and then loosen the stakes on an area of wall wide enough for twenty men to get through. Wait until we charge out of the gates on our sortie and then pull down the wall, cross the trench and take the fuckers in the flank. I’ll have the Fifth do the same on the other flank. We’ll crush them between us.’

‘My men will do everything necessary, they will be ready,’ Pomponius yelled, yanking his horse round. ‘Tribune Vespasian, ride back to the legion; tell Primus Pilus Faustus the third and fourth cohorts are to form up in column at the gate; fifth, sixth, eighth and tenth are to join the seventh and ninth on the wall, I shall see to their deployment personally. You and Faustus are to take the first and second cohorts, and any auxiliary cavalry you can muster, and to start preparing the flank attack. Report to me when it is ready.’

Vespasian galloped through the driving rain to convey the orders to Faustus. Within moments they were issued to each cohort by a system of cornu calls and hand signals. Watching the swift deployment of the legion, Vespasian realised that he had a lot to learn about the secret world of the centurions. Away to his left, just visible through the rain and the dim night, then lit up for an instant by a searing blaze of lightning, he could see the V Macedonica deploying to their section of the wall, the urgency to reinforce it growing with every new section torn down.

Vespasian rode at the head of the first cohort, which was the regulation double strength, nearly a thousand men. Faustus puffed along on foot at his side as they quick-marched along the rear of the wall. Behind them followed the second cohort and Paetus with a full
ala
or wing of 480 auxiliary cavalry. Legionaries from the other cohorts swarmed up the many sets of steps onto the ramparts. A quick succession of lightning flashes seemed to slow their ascent into a series of jerky movements. Another peal of thunder snapped
over their heads, forcing some to duck involuntarily, as if there was more to be feared from the imagined wrath of Jupiter than the immediate danger of the enemy’s relentless missile barrage.

Eventually the cries and screams of conflict lessened; they had reached the limit of the Thracian attack. Vespasian leapt from his horse and beckoned Faustus to follow him. They scrambled up some deserted steps to the walkway that ran behind the wall. Behind them the two cohorts halted. The sodden legionaries waited for orders, no doubt wondering what they were doing so far from the main action.

Vespasian removed his helmet and inched his head over the parapet. The sight took his breath away; it was his first view of massed battle. Thousands upon thousands of Thracian warriors were hurling themselves towards the towering Roman defences across the wood and corpses piled in the trench. They flung ladders up the wall and scaled them, with the bravado of men who consider themselves already dead and therefore have nothing to lose. Archers and slingers concentrated their fire along the parapet at the apex of each ladder, forcing the defenders to stay down until the warriors reached the top, then the covering fire would stop for fear of hitting their own men. Bitter hand-to-hand struggles ensued, generally resulting in the attackers being hurled backwards off their ladders to disappear, screaming, into their comrades twenty feet below. As they fell volleys of missiles slammed into those defenders not quick enough to duck back down, cracking open skulls, piercing eyes, throats and arms and throwing men back to fall as lifeless dolls at the feet of their comrades, whose turn it would now be to replace them in the line.

Most of the breaches in the wall had been plugged by the timely arrival of the main Roman force. Those attackers who had made it through were now either lying dead in the churned mud or fighting to the last man, in ever-decreasing pockets of defiance. Surrender was not an option, they had come here to kill and be killed.