the battlefield. Marcus bent over, putting his hands on his knees to provide support for suddenly weak limbs, and was abruptly, violently, sick.
*
Postumius Avitus Macrinus, legatus of the Imperial 20th Legion, stepped on to the blood-soaked slope with a grim face, the two centuries advancing up the hill ahead of him systematically butchering any of the wounded that had survived. A stroke of luck had brought a Petriana messenger to him as his own legion and the 2nd were marching less than five miles distant. His leading cohorts had been driven forward towards the distant smoke of the battle at a merciless run by their centurions, their exhaustion turning to cold purpose as they crested the final slope and saw thousands of the enemy below. The barbarian warband had scattered like chaff under their combined attack, put to flight in their tribal and family groups and pursued by a dozen cohorts with murder in their hearts and the guidance of questing cavalrymen, eager for heads.
He’d met with Licinius briefly when the Petriana’s prefect had found the oncoming legions, and had guided them in to attack from either side of the wood before taking the 6th’s remaining cohorts down through the trees to reinforce the Tungrians. He’d been unsurprised to have his request for the prefect to take over the remnants of the 6th legion refused without hesitation.
‘Absolutely not, Legatus, I was brought up on horseback and this style of fighting doesn’t suit me. Besides, you need the Petriana out in front of your legions, and I’m the best man to keep a foot firmly up their idle British arses. Go and talk to the man that made this possible.’
He’d pointed up the hill behind them, at a cohort-sized group of warriors arrayed behind an impressive rampart of dead barbarians, and told the legate in swift, economical sentences the story of Titus Tigidius Perennis’s betrayal of the 6th and the Tungrians’ stand on the hillside. Both Perennis’s treachery and his parentage had come as a shock to the veteran officer.
‘Jupiter! Sextus Tigidius Perennis’s son did this? The son of the praetorian prefect lured an imperial legion into a barbarian ambush? Every time I think I’ve seen it all…’
Nodding his understanding, and clapping the tired prefect on the shoulder, he’d called a senior centurion to his side, pointing up the hill.
‘I’m going up there. You might want to send a few men with me in case any of those dead barbarians is faking.’
Behind him, mute testimony to the effectiveness of Perennis’s betrayal, thousands of Roman bodies lay in untidy bloodstained heaps around a series of unseen diminishing circles, the successive defence perimeters of the hopelessly outnumbered and disarrayed 6th Legion cohorts taken in Calgus’s trap. He had already seen Sollemnis’s body for himself, needing to know that the man was really dead and not carried away as a hostage. The legatus’s sword had been hidden under another man’s body, concealment sufficient to foil the brief search of the fallen for valuables that had been all the ongoing battle had allowed the barbarians. The weapon now rested in its scabbard once more, carried by one of his staff. He would have the difficult honour of passing it on to the man’s oldest son.
He should have been at home himself, his age advancing towards a mature fifty more quickly than he cared to consider after a lifetime fighting Rome’s enemies. The throne, however, or those behind it, trusted him too well to leave him in retirement. He’d been called from his fireside to command the 20th barely three months before, with instructions to look for signs that senior officers in the province were not to be trusted.
‘I won’t be the imperial informer, Prefect Perennis,’ he’d told the praetorian guard’s commander flatly, pointing a thick finger at the emperor’s right-hand man, with whom he’d served twenty years before in Syria. He’d been respectfully summoned to dine with the imperial favourite, a private dinner served by slaves who appeared deaf, so little was their interest in the proceedings.
‘And no one expects you to, Senator, least of all me. I don’t care if some of the younger and impressionable idiots believe all they hear from Rome, and take it into their stupid heads that Commodus isn’t fit for their respect. Every young emperor has to earn the regard of the army, and he will, given time. What I want from you is hard intelligence on the British situation, who’s effective and who isn’t. The rumours reaching us here are that the governor is playing a foolish game, not sending all of the gold intended to keep the northern tribal leaders happy to the right places, and we’d rather know the truth with enough time to act on it. Gods above us, the last thing we need is another bloody revolt on the edge of the world. On top of that, you’ll provide us with a tested senior officer in place if anything does happen.’
He’d nodded, able to accept the task he was bidden to take on. Perennis had smiled quietly and sipped his wine, then put the cup down.
‘One thing, though, you could keep an eye open for the late Senator Valerius Aquila’s boy. There are rumours that he might have buried himself out of sight in the Wall army.’
He’d given the other man a darker look, as unresolved as to his views on young Aquila then as he was now. He’d known the senator in happier days, and had viewed his death with a sickened resignation as one of the small dramas that play out across every change of power. If the lad was still at large, and not dead or enslaved, he was mindful not to take too close an interest. Ignoring the misdemeanours of the men that surrounded the young emperor was one thing, abetting them was quite another.
Before him, in increasing numbers as he climbed the incline, slipping more than once on the treacherous footing, were arrayed barbarian dead, the leavings of the auxiliary cohort’s defiant stand at the valley’s head. At first they lay alone, wounded men killed as they had crawled away from the battle, then in twos and threes. The ground, previously scattered with the blood of the wounded, became slick with blood and faeces, the earth pounded into a greasy bog under thousands of feet, and the dead suddenly outnumbered the living. An eye-watering stench pervaded the air.
Unable to avoid committing the indignity of stepping upon the fallen, the legatus climbed a wall of corpses three feet high, men hacked and torn by grievous wounds, dropped in their hundreds to form a rampart for the defenders to shelter behind. A soldier to his right spotted some minute movement among the mangled warriors, and stepped in to strike with his gladius. The legatus returned his gaze to the front, seeing auxiliary troops among the dead for the first time, their bodies neatly laid in rows by their fellow troops and covered with their capes. He winced at the number of their dead, looking to the remaining troops to gauge their fitness for further action.
The cohort was standing to attention, neatly paraded across the hillside by century, a good sign in itself, as was the fact that they had already washed most of the inevitable blood spray of battle from their faces, if not their black-caked armour. The cohort’s prefect stepped forward to meet him, the man’s grasp shaking slightly. Shock or fatigue? He kept his demeanour brisk, hoping to help the man a little with his battle weariness.
‘Prefect Equitius? I’m Legatus Postumius Avitus Macrinus, Twentieth Imperial Legion and, with the death of our esteemed colleague Legatus Gaius Calidius Sollemnis, now general in command of this whole sorry mess.’
He paused, looking out across the sea of corpses.
‘You, Prefect, seem to have gained us a victory. The Petriana’s commander tells me that you held this place against many times your own number in order to keep Calgus busy until reinforcement could arrive. You paid a heavy price for that success, I see…’
The other man nodded, his eyes far away.
‘You could consider this ground bought and paid for, Legatus.’
A burly man passed them without recognition, his hollow eyes fixed on the body cradled in his arms.
‘Another casualty. As you say, bought and paid for.’
The prefect watched Morban deposit the corpse alongside the cohort’s other dead with gentle care.
‘His son, I fear.’
‘Ah… a difficult moment for any man.’
The senior officer waited a moment, watching the other for signs of mental defeat, but saw none.
‘I’m sorry, but I’m new enough to this country not to know your unit by anything other than name. Forgive the question as simple ignorance of your men’s resilience, but can they fight on?’
The prefect nodded slowly.
‘We have an overall casualty figure of one hundred and fifty-eight dead and another one hundred and three seriously wounded, of whom at least half will die, plus a couple of hundred with minor wounds, cuts and bruises, who can be treated in the field. I am three officers short, one dead and two wounded, plus a First Spear with an arrow wound that he’s determined to ignore, and I’ve lost half a dozen or so watch officers. So it isn’t pretty, but yes, we can fight, given time to bury our dead and get some food into the troops.’
