The Amber Road (33 page)

The array was completed by some regular auxiliaries on the extreme flanks armed with javelins and swords. Some of them could be seen now and then precariously scrambling between the trees on the vertiginous slopes. Given the terrain, despite the words he had spoken to the Cantabrians on his right, Gallienus considered it most improbable that troops there would have any influence on the outcome.

The emperor had had plenty of time to study his opponent’s order of battle. Simplicinius Genialis had chosen his ground well and set out his forces with acumen. Yet he had surrendered all initiative. For the past two days the imperial field army had watched the rebel forces. Each morning the army of Raetia formed up in good order, and each night posted adequate numbers of advanced pickets. The latter had little effect on the deserters. In the dark, men crossed from one side to the other, as was the way in any civil war.

Both days, the imperial army had remained in camp. They could not stay where they were indefinitely, because their supply line was too long and tenuous. They could not retreat, because that might prove fatal to imperial prestige. The troops were restless. Despite the advantageous position of their enemy, despite the terrible casualties that would come from plunging missiles, they were eager to advance. In part to curb this impatience, on the first day Gallienus had made it known he had sent two columns on flank marches to come around behind the enemy. One thousand Dalmatian horsemen under the Egyptian Theodotus had retraced their steps through the Julier pass all the way to Clavenna, where they were to take a parallel route north through the mountains to Curia. At a conservative estimate it was over a hundred and twenty miles along a narrow road easily blocked. If they arrived at all, it was unlikely to be any time soon. Another thousand cavalry, Moors commanded by the Danubian Probus, had followed a local shepherd who claimed he knew a sheep track passable by horses which snaked off to the east and came out to the north of the enemy. The existence of this path was dubious.

Several factors, all in the lap of the gods, had encouraged Gallienus to delay. The omens had been ambiguous, and there had been portents.

When they were in Clavenna, bees had swarmed around one of the standards. The priests had produced specious positive interpretations: bees laboured together for the common good; they never failed to obey the sole ruler of the hive. But Gallienus remembered the same had happened to the standards of the emperor Niger shortly before his army had been defeated by that of Severus.

Back in Comum, a priest of Jupiter had announced a dream he had said was sent by the god. In it a man in a toga had forced his way into the emperor’s encampment. He had been accompanied by two
lare
s, the household divinities easily recognizable by the short dog-skin tunics they wore and the cornucopias in their hands. Near the
praetorium
, in front of the imperial standards, the
lares
had vanished. Left alone, the toga-clad figure had been beaten to death by the soldiers. The priest had produced his own exegesis of the dream. In every domestic shrine, the
lares
flanked the togate image of the
genius
of the household. Genialis was the adjective of
genius
. After initial success, the governor of Raetia would be deserted by the gods and killed.

Gallienus was unconvinced by this oneiromancy. For thirteen years his own
genius
had been worshipped across the
imperium
. The gods abandoning the
genius
chimed too closely with a thing that had been preying on his thoughts. Not since that day at Platonopolis with the old philosopher Plotinus, when his soul had been taken to these very Alps, had Gallienus sensed the presence of his divine companion. The emperor was sure Hercules had not left him for ever – like Antony in Alexandria, he would have heard the music – but the god was not with him now.

Amidst these supernatural concerns, Gallienus had been waiting for something else, something akin to divine intervention. It had appeared in the dead of the previous night in the form of the
frumentarius
called Venutus.

As dawn’s rose-red fingers lit the sky, Gallienus had led his army out to battle. His dispositions largely mirrored those of the enemy. A phalanx of heavy infantry was massed across the plain. On their right were four thousand drawn from all the four legions in the two Pannonian provinces. This mountain battle should hold nothing out of the ordinary for their commander, Proculus. He had been brought up in the Alpes Maritimae. Next to Proculus stood the veteran Prefect Volusianus with two thousand of his Praetorians. The left was held by Tacitus with a thousand shields drawn from the Italian Legio II Parthica, and another thousand from Legio V Macedonica marched west from Dacia. Like the enemy, they were all in six ranks, except on each wing, where the additional numbers allowed a formation packed twice as deep.

To provide covering shooting, the second line consisted of every one of the three thousand auxiliary foot archers the imperial field army possessed. The young Narbonensian
protector
Carus had charge of them.

The battle would be decided by the infantry, but not all the cavalry was without use. Gallienus had formed a third line of eastern horse archers to augment the storm of arrows. There were a thousand Persians. They were among those who had surrendered some years before at Corycus in Cilicia. They were still led by their original Sassanid commander, the
framadar
Zik Zabrigan. They were joined by five hundred Parthians. Ironically, these had fled to Rome to escape the Sassanids even longer ago. As he was a scion of their ancient Arsacid royal dynasty, Tiridates, son of the exiled Armenian king Chosroes, had been set over them.

The Cantabrians had been sent clambering up the cliff to the right; another five hundred auxiliaries were doing the same on the left. The remainder of the army was the reserve of two thousand horse guards with Gallienus.

The emperor surveyed the field. All was ready. He had military men around him: the
protectores
Aurelian and Heraclian, the junior Praetorian Prefect, Censorinus, the
Princeps Peregrinorum
, Rufinus. Somewhat apart were the heads of the imperial chanceries. Quirinius, the
a Rationibus
, Palfurius, the
ab Epistulis
, Cominius, the
a Studiis
and the others looked very civilian and more than a little out of place, but wherever an emperor went, the commonplace business of the
imperium
followed.

It reminded Gallienus of the morning before the battle of Mediolanum. But there was a difference. At Mediolanum the divisions had been commanded by senators as well as
protectores
. Today the latter provided all the high command. However, he had senators in his entourage. Some were there because he liked and trusted them: Saturninus, the consul; Lucillus, the consul-designate; Sabinillus, the philosophic friend of Plotinus. Others were in attendance for the opposite reason. It was best not to have men like ex-prefect of the city Albinus or the wealthy Nummius Faustinianus out of his sight.

Gallienus looked up at the standards flying behind him: the red Pegasus on white background of the horse guards, and his own imperial purple
draco
. With the serried ranks of steel-clad riders and horses below, they made a brave sight. It was a pity he did not feel the tension in the air, the tightness in his skin, that told him his divine
comes
was with him. But, with or without Hercules, he knew he would acquit himself with courage. Was he not descended from both the Licinii and the Egnatii?
Virtus
had never been lacking in those two ancient Roman families.

There was no reason for further prevarication. Gallienus drew his eagle-hilted sword. Freki the Alamann and another of the German bodyguard closed up on either side of the emperor they had sworn to die protecting.

‘Are you ready for war?’ Gallienus flourished the sword.

‘Ready!’ The cry spread out through the army.

‘Are you ready for war!’

As the third response echoed off up the hillsides, Gallienus told the
bucinator
to sound the advance.

The brassy notes were picked up by trumpet after trumpet through the army. The thing was in motion, and there could be no stopping it now. With the tramp of measured tread, the infantry moved forward. The cavalry walked after, the hooves of their horses crushing the yellow flowers which carpeted the valley.

The Raetian army waited, dense and immobile. The only movements were the flags fluttering above.

Gallienus transferred his sword to his hand with the reins while he wiped the sweat from his palm on his thigh. He prayed silently, his lips barely moving:
Hercules, Guardian of Mankind, Overthrower of Tyrants …

The tide of the imperial
comitatus
slowly flowed up the slope. Twice, parts of the line halted to let the rest catch up. They dressed their ranks. There, Gallienus thought, that was the advantage of professional officers over senatorial amateurs. No wild charges like the uncontrolled pursuit unleashed by that young senator Acilius Glabrio at Mediolanum. Here, Gallienus’s
protectores
had their men well in hand.

When the front rank closed to within four hundred paces, trumpets rang out from the Raetian lines. Their standards inclined to the fore. Like a great vessel slipping its moorings, their whole force moved downhill.

Gallienus’s spirits soared. His men were within ballista range. Simplicinius Genialis had no concealed artillery. And the Raetians were moving. They had not sown the ground in front of them with caltrops. They had not dug those concealed pits with stakes at the bottom the soldiers called lilies. Simplicinius Genialis had had the time to prepare the battlefield. Perhaps the portly equestrian had not been metamorphosed into such a man of war after all.

At about two hundred paces, just outside effective bowshot, the imperial army halted again. ‘
Testudo!
’ – the call came back to Gallienus from dozens of centurions – ‘
Testudo! Testudo!
’ Big shields swung up, locked together, and the heavy infantry roofed and walled themselves against what must come.

Gallienus felt a dip of disappointment. The Raetian troops had halted. Their front ranks, too, were going into
testudo
. Of course, they were Roman regulars as well. It was only to be expected. Gallienus noted the Angles on the enemy left were going into their version of the formation. What was it Ballista had said they called it? A shield-burg, something like that. It was strange to think he would never see the friend of his youth again. In his report, the centurion Regulus who had fought his way out had said he had not seen Ballista’s body but made it clear there was no possibility he had survived the Gothic sack of Olbia.

Like sentient siege engines created by some latter-day Daedalus, massive artifices made of men and wood and steel, the leading edges of the two armies ground towards each other. There was no moving fast in
testudo.

As if choreographed at a lavish imperial spectacle, trumpets simultaneously sounded from both sides, to be followed on the instant by a myriad twanging bows and the awful sound of thousands of arrows slicing through the air. They fell like squalls of dark, evil rain. Thunking into wood, glancing off steel; all too many found a place in flesh, human and equine. Men and beasts screamed. Horses, maddened with pain, reared and bolted among the eastern horse archers in front of Gallienus. Most of the victims in either army were in the rear ranks. Warded by their shields, in the gloom, the inhabitants of each
testudo
shuffled and nudged ahead.

Gallienus watched the eagle of Legio III Italia Concors. The gilded bird advanced steadfastly over the
testudo
of Bonosus’s rebel legion. Arrows began to fall among the imperial party. It was good. As Gallienus had thought, the purple
draco
was too tempting a target. He was drawing the aim of the Raetian archers away from his fighting men at the front. Gallienus called for a shield. Freki the Alamann gave him a surprised glance. Let him look. It had been a long time since Gallienus had entered battle without his divine
comes
. There had been no need for a shield when Hercules had wrapped him in the skin of the Nemean lion; it was proof against iron, bronze, stone.

The armies were closing. The gaze of Gallienus switched between Bonosus’s eagle and his own heavy infantry. ‘
Now!
’ he whispered. ‘
Surely now, Proculus
.’ As if the thought caused the deed, the imperial front ranks halted. Not as neat as on a parade ground, but not too ragged or bowed. On the left, the column of legionaries commanded by Tacitus kept going. But there was no movement on the right. Had something gone wrong? Why was that wing stationary? What was Proculus doing?

With relief, Gallienus saw the two thousand on the right resume their advance. Proculus might be a whoremonger, but he was a fine officer. And he was loyal. Gallienus found himself grinning. It had been an inept attempt by the
frumentarius
of Postumus to entrap Proculus. The whore masquerading as wife to the
frumentarius
had admitted everything without torture. Gallienus had had her whipped anyway. Her pain – the livid stripes – had added to his pleasure when he had taken the bitch himself. Afterwards, he had been merciful; merely giving her to Proculus’s men. It might be doubted if they had exercised much
clementia
. The
frumentarius
, of course, had died slowly.

A roar brought Gallienus back. The Angles on the rebel left had burst from their Shield-burg into a wedge. They raced forward. Fleet of foot, they caught Proculus’s men by surprise. They crashed into the legionaries before the Pannonians had a chance to shift out from their
testudo
into a fighting formation. Gallienus could see Angle warriors actually climbing on top of the locked shields of the legionaries. They hacked down with their longs-words, like crazed roofers demolishing the structure beneath their feet. Only the twelve-man-deep formation of the Pannonians, the constant pressure from the rear, was preventing them from being swept away.