The legions they brought did nothing to increase the strength of the army; with conflict now permanent, these new levies were needed just to replace the losses. The Roman base camp on the frontier had been in existence so long it was now like a small town. Nearly every soldier had a local ‘wife’, an attachment that did little to keep them out of the wine shops and brothels, which had been set up outside the camp walls. Most cared only for the spoils of war, so that they could sustain their drinking and whoring, as well as satisfy the raucous demands from their local women that they provide for their bastards. They killed without thinking, marched wherever their commander sent them, and ceased to moan about their use as fodder for another’s ambition, as long as they received their share of the spoils.
Aquila, alone in the princeps of the 18th, avoided permanent attachments, enduring the good-natured ribbing he got from Fabius, who enjoyed a complicated series of liaisons. He consolidated the position of senior centurion in his legion and had become, without trying, someone to be reckoned with, even impressing the local levies of axillaries by learning the language. It was only after he had returned to Rome that Pomponius realised that the tribunes he dismissed for electing Aquila Terentius had all been appointees of Quintus Cornelius; that, and the whispering campaign they mounted against him, cost him his triumph. The message, to avoid interfering in legionary elections, was not lost on his successors. Aquila was always voted in, and by so comprehensive a margin that he held the post no matter who he offended.
He tried to keep his men up to the mark by personal example, and garnered decorations, as well as scars, for his personal bravery on every operation. After the first few years, a succession of young tribunes, usually clients of the serving general, arrived from Rome to take command, replacing more experienced men. Most found, after an initial attempt to overawe him, that it was better to work through, as well as learn from, the formidable primus pilus. He took as much care of them as he did the rankers, well aware that their birth and background sometimes caused them to be foolishly brave. Whilst their attitude to personal danger was something he admired, it did nothing to alter his feelings for a system that elevated such novices over soldiers with long experience.
He was cherished by the men for the care he took for their safety, while being heaped in an equal measure of verbal ordure for his uncompromising methods. His training, in an army remarkable for that attribute, was exhausting. He commanded troops who, once they had been separated from women and the wine gourd, could run five miles and still fight. Given their efficiency, they were always in the thick of the battle, often, as in the case of Pomponius, engaged in snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, yet, thanks to his iron discipline and tactical common sense, the 18th’s casualties remained relatively low.
The senior commanders generally loathed him; first for the way he questioned their orders, but more seriously for the annoying habit he had of being right. Time and again he informed them that they were fighting a war which required lightly armed, mobile forces, backed by a powerful cavalry arm, or one with high-built towers and ballistae to destroy and overcome fortifications. And he gave each new senator the same message; there was only one way to actually stop the war, and that was to go beyond the pastoral tribes who inhabited the frontier and attack the hill forts of the interior, starting with Pallentia.
The determined ones, already aware of this, would nod sagely, before they looked at the problem. Certainly, they would lay plans and make arrangements, but, with only a year to make their mark, the idea evaporated as the weeks of preparation slipped into months. Aquila watched the process with a jaundiced eye, until the day came when he and the men under his command were ordered to attack a softer target. No senator wanted to go home with nothing, and that led to a great deal of hard, brutal fighting; it also made a bad situation worse.
With a really lazy general it sufficed to accuse some innocent tribe of revolt, sack their camps, steal their wealth and sell the people into slavery. The idea that the system was corrupt had first occurred to Aquila before he ever set foot in Spain. Little of what he had observed since did anything to change his opinion: that the Republic was a rich man’s pasture, from which the mass of citizens were excluded.
The day she found out that her son might have survived, Claudia could not contain herself. All her normal reserves deserted her. Sextius, full of concern, found her weeping, not aware that these were tears of joy, mixed with the fear that this was yet another false trail, but, as ever, he was concerned with appearances. What would his host, Cassius Barbinus, say if he emerged from his bedchamber with his wife red-eyed from crying? Then, remembering the reputation of his fellow-senator, he smirked; the old satyr would probably approve, assuming that Sextius had ill-used Claudia. Doubtless, with such a gossip the story of his marital debauchery would be all over Rome in a flash.
Dinner was a trial; Claudia wanted nothing to do with food, she wanted to go back to see Annius Dabo on his farm, to ask him more about Piscius, his father, a man whose ashes had long since been scattered in the wind. Not that the son was very forthcoming; he had given her a name, a bit of a description; an age, younger than Annius, that placed this Aquila near the right year. She knew that this boy had left the farm with some soldiers many years before, heading for Sicily, but there was little else; no mention of that golden charm she had wound round his ankle on the night of his birth, the eagle that would positively identify him.
‘The name,’ she said, not aware that she had spoken out loud.
‘Sorry, my dear?’ said Sextius, while Cassius Barbinus and the other guests looked at her strangely.
‘It’s nothing.’
Claudia forced herself to smile, but in her heart she was thinking that Aquila was an unusual name for a child. Yet you might choose that name if something about the infant led you to do so.
Mancinus dragged his eyes away from the gold eagle round the senior centurion’s neck. For reasons he could not understand, this object unnerved him; come to that, the owner got under his skin merely for the way he looked at his commanding general.
‘I want you to take a small force and reconnoitre this fort. I intend to invest it and I want up-to-date intelligence. And I will move the army to a forward area to be ready, away from the camp and its comforts.’
Mancinus pointed to Pallentia, clearly marked on the map before him. Aquila leant forward, the decorations that adorned his tunic flashing in the light from the lamp. His charm swung free, so he took it in his hand to hold it out of the way. Mancinus, now that he could not see it, felt relieved, but that did little to dent his curiosity. It was very Celtic in appearance, very likely the property of some rich Iberian chieftain. That was what he wanted, a cartload of similar trophies to take back to Rome.
‘Even a small force should be a tribune’s command,’ said Aquila.
The senator was annoyed, and not for the first time. Terentius seemed to be totally unaware of the respect due to a man of his rank. He sought to put him in his place, quite unaware of the pit he was digging for himself.
‘None of the men I brought out with me have the necessary experience.’
Aquila looked at him without speaking, but the glare said it all; the wisdom of arriving in Spain, every year, with a whole new batch of tribunes, was the question in his eyes. Mancinus was thinking that those same tribunes were fools; they should never have elected this man as primus pilus. He was unaware that he would have faced a mutiny from his soldiers if they had dared appoint anyone else. Aquila Terentius might wear the golden eagle on his neck, but to the rankers of the 18th it was just as much their talisman as his. The legionaries had seen him kiss it just before a fight, watched him go into situations where no man had the right to survive and emerge with barely a scratch; take cohort after cohort through the enemy lines without loss, and damn tribunes, legates, quaestors and generals openly for their stupidity.
He kept them fed and warm where the means allowed, and never left a comrade to die if there was any chance of rescue. And then, to temper his power, there was Fabius, who debunked his ‘uncle’ at every turn, and acted as a conduit for any man with a grievance. Little flogging occurred in Aquila’s legion unless it involved the theft of another man’s goods and no one could remember anyone being broken at the wheel. Discipline was tight, and all the more effective for being, in the main, self-imposed. He was a paragon, and all the more unwelcome in the tent of a poltroon because of it.
Mancinus struggled to hold the stare, then coughed and turned away, silently cursing the horns of his personal dilemma. He had come here, like the others, anticipating easy conquests and personal gain, and on the way it had looked simple. Break an alliance with a tribe that had already submitted to Rome, kill their warrior menfolk and enslave the rest; demand a triumph to display your booty and retire to a life of ease, interspersed with a little politics. Quintus Cornelius had done it, as had practically every commander in the ten years since, and the Senate, for all the huffing and puffing of some members, had usually left well alone. The majority howled down the cries of the few with honour that these men should be impeached, and used procedural motions to nullify the machinations of the new juries manned by the knights.
