The War at the Edge of the World (36 page)

Sitting back from the smoke, he listened to the nearest of his men, singing around their fire. From across the tent lines there was more music: a troop of Mauri was letting out a high wailing chant, beating hand drums and rattles. Then, in the distance, the roaring of the Alamanni from their own encampment near the imperial enclosure. And all around in the deep darkness, the silence of the mountains, the empty plains, the blackened, ravaged villages.

North again, the army spread out along the route of march in a column four miles long, following the track of an ancient road built by the legions in centuries past. At the vanguard rode the cavalry of the Equites Dalmatae and Equites Mauri, and behind them two cohorts of Legion I Minervia from the Rhine. Then came the commanders, the Augustus, his family and his staff, ringed by his elite bodyguard of Protectores, then the Praetorian Cohorts and a mounted guard of the Equites Scutarii. Following the emperor came the main legion force: detachments of VIII Augusta and XXII Primigenia; then II Augusta from the southern province of Britannia. The baggage train rolled after them, nearly two miles of carts and mules carrying tents and baggage, grain and water, and a full complement of siege artillery. With them went the slaves, and three hundred prisoners roped together and guarded by soldiers. The detachment of Legion VI Victrix brought up the rear, with the Equites Promoti as cavalry guard. And to either side of the march ranged the Alamannic warriors in loose order, with the horsemen of the Equites Batavi riding  between them.

The army moved slowly, covering only twelve miles a day between camps. Castus was marching with his men at the rear of the column, and the air was thick with dust churned up by the men, wagons and horses ahead.

‘Can’t hardly breathe, or see,’ Modestus said in a muffled voice. He had the dampened end of his scarf between his teeth.

‘Get that rag out of your mouth, optio,’ Castus growled.

Modestus spat the scarf from his mouth, making a more than usually sour face. ‘Why do the German detachments always get to march at the front?’ he said. ‘It’s our province, isn’t it? We should be in the vanguard.’

‘Got to earn it,’ Castus told him. ‘But don’t worry – I’ll make sure you’re right up at the front when the Picts come down from the hills to chop us up.’

He had told the men about the Picts, and their habits. He was, after all, the closest the legion had to an expert. In particular, he had told them to avoid being captured at all costs – death would be far preferable to what the Picts did to their prisoners.

‘How come you survived then, centurion?’ one of the new men had asked. Stipo, the fullery assistant.

‘My neck’s too thick,’ he told them. ‘They’d blunt their blades trying to cut my head off.’

The men had laughed, nervously. Castus was glad that they were scared – they needed to be. This kind of warfare could too easily encourage a lack of caution. And he was determined that no men under his command would end up trapped in some ambush and slaughtered like his previous century. No – keep them nervous. Keep them alert. Let the Rhine detachments hold the vanguard if they wanted. Just keep the men together, Castus told himself, and deliver them safely to the battlefield.

By late afternoon the high black mountains filled the horizon to the north and west; the army crossed another river that flowed down out of the valley and built their entrenchments on the far bank. As the soldiers worked at the ditches they heard cheering from along the line of the fortification. A party of mounted men was circling the limits of the camp.

‘There’s the son of the Augustus!’ Remigius said, standing at the lip of the trench. All along the line, soldiers were throwing their muddy arms up in salute. Castus frowned. Was it right to salute a mere tribune like an emperor, even if he was an emperor’s son?

The cavalcade rode by, Constantine in the lead on his champ­ing grey, dressed in a gilded cuirass and a flowing white cloak. His head was bare, his long grave face set hard, and he ignored the salutations of the troops. Behind him was a heavy man with a big orange beard who wore a lot of gold.

‘And that’ll be our tame barbarian king,’ Modestus sneered. ‘What’s he called? Krautus? Rackus?’

‘Hrocus, I think,’ said Diogenes, leaning on his mattock. ‘His people were defeated on the Rhine five or six years back and he swore loyalty to Rome. Or to Constantius anyway.’

‘Centurions!’ a voice shouted. Victorinus, the tribune com­manding the detachment of the Sixth, came strutting along the trench line, gesturing angrily. ‘Get your men back to work! This isn’t a pay parade!’

Castus saluted quickly, and gave his men an encouraging growl. But as he turned back to the trench he saw the figure riding at the back of Constantine’s party, plainly dressed and unassuming. For a moment as he passed, the notary Nigrinus caught his eye and nodded in recognition. Then he was gone.

Thunder filled the sky at dusk, rolling in from the west. In the great marching camp the soldiers looked up apprehensively from their smoking fires between the tent lines and saw the lightning crackling and flickering over the dark peaks of the mountains. A gust of wind, heavy and charged, and then the rain came down, drumming off the tent leather and turning the ground to slippery mud.

What message was it, what omen? Castus considered it as he stood outside his tent, under the dripping hood of a cape. Jupiter the Thunderer, the lightning-hurler, was a friend of Rome. But an angry god all the same. Castus remembered the story of the emperor Carus, who had ruled back when he had been a boy: killed on campaign in Persia when his tent had been struck by lightning, or so the official version claimed. It was not wise to ignore divine warnings.

Hunching his shoulders, Castus made his way across the slippery turf to the southern perimeter of the camp, and the stretch of rampart allocated to his men. The barrier of sharpened stakes showed a jagged black outline with every flash of distant lightning.

Outside the stakes and the trench was utter darkness, filled with rushing rain. Castus stood and stared into it, letting his eyes trick him into seeing shapes moving out there. There were sentries standing six paces to his right and left, motionless in their capes and hoods, similarly gazing out into the night. The lightning glow flared off the tips of their spears. Castus paced slowly along the rampart.

‘Centurion!’ a voice said, one of the sentries at the rampart turning to salute. Castus recognised Diogenes’ pinched face under the hood and helmet rim.

‘Keep your eyes out there, not on me,’ he growled. The former teacher nodded smartly and looked back across the jagged stakes.

‘I don’t believe there’s anybody out there at all,’ Diogenes said. ‘Or for miles around either.’

‘Maybe so. But barbarians are very illogical – you never know what they might do…’

‘“They create a desolation, and they call it peace”,’ Diogenes intoned quietly.

‘What’s that?’

‘It’s from Tacitus. His account of the campaigns of Agricola, in this same country. I was thinking about it earlier today.’

Castus had never heard of Tacitus, or Agricola. But he was used to the schoolteacher’s stories by now – all the things he had learned in his books.

‘I rather wonder,’ the man went on, ‘what the people of this country must think of us. What do they tell themselves when they see a great fortress like this appearing overnight? Thousands of armed men, a city of tents, where there was only empty land…?’ He turned again to gesture back at the camp, until Castus nudged him and pointed out into the darkness.

‘Do they imagine,’ Diogenes went on, ‘that some race of terrible gods has appeared over the horizon, do you think?’

Castus shrugged. He had wondered similar things himself.

‘Just keep your eyes open,’ he said. ‘The only terrible gods you need to worry about are me and the tribune.’

He stayed on the rampart for another two hours, pacing the line back and forth until Modestus came to relieve him. Then he made his way across the camp again towards the medical station; two of his men had been injured by a panicked horse earlier in the evening and he needed to check on them. The tent lines spread all around him in their regular rows. The fires were out now, damped by rain, and the only lights showed from the wagon park and the imperial enclosure at the heart of the camp. Castus steered a path in the shredded moonlight, alert to the sensations around him: the smell of wet horses from the cavalry lines, wood ash and tent leather; the stink of the latrine trenches; the peaty mud underfoot. He considered what Diogenes had said: truly the camp was like a city, spread here in the darkness of a wilderness. But it was his own city – the only place he could call home.

Sentries challenged him as he passed the looming tent that housed the standards of the legion detachments, and he called back the watchword. Skirting the edge of the imperial enclosure beyond, he turned into the narrower avenue leading to the medical station. Two soldiers came staggering in the other direction, drawing themselves up and saluting quickly as they saw him. Castus turned to watch them move away, and caught a gleam of light from one of the smaller pavilions at the edge of the imperial enclosure.

As he watched, the tent flap was flung aside and a figure stepped out, illuminated briefly. Castus recognised Valens, and was about to call out to his friend when another man appeared in the tent doorway. It was the notary Nigrinus, smiling and saying something to Valens, before stepping back inside the tent again. Castus stood motionless, watching from the shadows as his friend turned, threw his hood over his head and stalked away between the tent lines. Moments later, the departing figure was lost in the mist of falling rain.

Kneeling beside the path, Castus plucked a stem of long grass and put it between his teeth. Through the scrub and the trees he could see the village boundary, wattle fences, low stone walls, and the humped grey thatch of the huts beyond.

‘What does it look like to you?’ he said.

‘Not much,’ Modestus replied. The optio tipped back his head, nostrils tightened, as if he might be able to smell danger. ‘No smoke from the huts. Reckon they’re long gone, centurion. Cleared out, same as the rest. No sound of animals – must have taken them too.’

No sound of birds either, Castus thought. No crows screech­ing and flapping around the abandoned grain stores. He sucked on the grass stem for a moment, turning it between his teeth. Behind him, thirty men of his century were waiting on the path, sitting along the verge with a few sentries watching the approaches. After the night’s rain the day was hot, still and sultry beneath a pale grey sky. Castus spat out the stem.

‘Macrinus,’ he called back down the track. The section leader nodded and came to join him at the head of the column. ‘Take two men and move up one hundred paces to the edge of the village. When you reach the first fence branch off to the left and follow the boundary around. Keep quiet and keep your eyes open. Remigius: do the same, around to the right. If you see anything or anyone give a shout then get back here quick.’

The two section leaders selected their men and moved off, walking slowly. Castus glanced at the scouts as they passed him. Macrinus and Remigius were in the lead, then the other five, with Diogenes lingering at the rear. They walked casually, spears across their shoulders.

‘Stipo! You going for a stroll in the forum? Helmet! Shield!’

The young soldier muttered an apology, put his helmet on and slung the shield from his back. Some of the others did the same. The group of scouts tightened up slightly, appearing more alert. Still not alert enough, Castus thought as he watched them move up the path. He realised he was grinding his back teeth together. A low stir of muttered voices came from the men behind him, and he hissed for them to be silent.

Four hours had passed since they had left camp. Four hours of picking their way slowly through an empty countryside, crossing streams and cutting through thickets. They were sup­posed to be capturing prisoners for questioning, but every settlement they found had been cleared out. No people, no animals. Even the food stores removed or destroyed. There were other patrols out too; they had been scouring the land in a twenty-mile radius from the camp for days, but none had brought in anything. How long could they continue like this? How long, Castus thought, could the emperor lead his army through an abandoned wasteland, using up supplies, wearing out men, on these pointless forays? Would the whole campaign end in nothing?

He watched the scouts as they arrived at the village boundary and separated, moving to the right and left between the high bushes and scrubby trees. Behind him he could hear the other soldiers muttering again, relaxing into bored discomfort. He glanced at Modestus, but the optio was gazing away towards the horizon.

‘Where are they, do you think?’ Modestus said. ‘Up there, in those hills?’

‘Maybe closer,’ Castus said quietly. For the last couple of hours he had felt a sensation of heat on the back of his neck, a tightening in his shoulders. The quiet of the land was unnerving, oppressive… maybe it was no more than that. Maybe no more than the pressure of keeping his men together, keeping them sharp and alert, when he knew as well as they did that this whole exercise could be pointless.

‘Why all this waiting around?’ a voice said from behind him somewhere, cutting through the low whispers. Placidus, the big Gaul. ‘Ought to just pile in there, kick down the doors, torch the place then take the long way home. Fucking waste of our lives, this is—’

‘Quiet!’ Castus said in a harsh whisper. He saw Modestus grimacing, gesturing to the others.

Turning back to the village, Castus squinted into the haze. Was that a sound, just then? He could not be sure – the voices of the men had almost covered it. Surely a sound, he thought; maybe a stifled cry, a scrape of metal… His face was damp with sweat, his fists clenched.

‘Did you hear something?’ he asked the optio.

‘What? No…’ Modestus shrugged.

Imagination, maybe? There was no sign of the scouts now, the village silent and still. Nothing moved.