Vespasian could feel the tension of the men as he rode at the head of the first cohort. He wanted to ride up and down the centuries, encouraging them, but, lacking the innate aristocratic self-confidence of many of his rank, he felt inadequate to the task. He had done nothing as yet to win the men’s trust and respect, and felt that he would seem to them to be just some callow youth, much younger than many of them. He contemplated the ludicrousness of the system that put a man as young as him, with no military experience, nominally in command of 480 men just because he came from a wealthy family. But that had been the way of Rome from the beginning, it was how the Senate kept its position in society, and the size of the Empire seemed to indicate that it was a system that worked. He decided to leave the morale-boosting to the men who were really in charge: the centurions. It was a great comfort to him that Faustus marched just behind him. He could hear him calling out to the men, praising their efforts, keeping them in formation, and reprimanding slackers. Vespasian knew that when it came to their first combat, whether it was to be here or at the river or further north, it was men like Faustus who would determine whether they lived or died.
Some anxious shouts from amongst the men caused him to look to his right.
‘Silence in the ranks,’ Faustus bellowed. ‘Keep your heads forward and concentrate on not tripping over the man in front.’
Across the plain, about two miles away, a small group of horsemen could be seen galloping, hell for leather, towards them.
‘Looks like trouble,’ Magnus muttered. ‘Good news doesn’t tend to travel that fast.’
The cornu sounded out once more, its deep call carrying clearly over the noise of the marching column.
‘That’s “Senior officers to report to commander” again,’ Magnus said. ‘Let’s hope the arsehole keeps his cool.’
‘An arsehole he may be,’ Vespasian said, swinging his horse out of the column, ‘but it seems to me that so far he’s made all the right decisions.’
‘There are still five miles to go and a river to cross; plenty of time to fuck it up.’
At the head of the column Vespasian pulled up beside Corbulo and Mauricius; Gallus and Quintus Caepio, prefect of the rearguard Gallic cavalry, were soon assembled.
‘News of the Thracians’ advance, I expect,’ Corbulo said, grimfaced. ‘Our scouts must have sighted them by now.’
They rode on in silence watching the small party of light cavalry closing in. Vespasian counted six of them and two riderless horses, and felt a chill go down his spine and start to gnaw away at him deep within his bowels: men had started to die. He steeled himself for what he knew would be the most testing day of his short life so far, more so than ambushing runaway slaves or rescuing Caenis, for this time he was on the defending side: all the initiative lay with the Thracians.
The scouts drew level and, with prodigious skill, wheeled their exhausted horses around, bringing them to the trot next to the group of officers.
‘Sir!’ Their leader, a powerful-looking man with a sunburnt face in his mid-thirties, saluted Corbulo. ‘Alkaios, Thessalian auxiliary light cavalry.’
‘Yes, yes, get on with it.’ Corbulo was anxious to get to the point.
‘We sighted the main body of Thracians half an hour ago about ten miles east. They’re mainly infantry, about three thousand of them. They’re moving quickly and with purpose; they’ve stopped burning as they go. We ran into one of their cavalry patrols but fought them off at the cost of two of my men, one of whom was only wounded and taken prisoner. May the gods ease his suffering.’
‘Indeed.’ Corbulo could guess as well as anyone else what was in store for the unfortunate man. ‘You say you saw no large amount of cavalry?’
‘No, sir, just patrols.’
‘Minerva’s tits, they must have guessed that we’re heading for the river and have sent their cavalry around us to the north to hold it against us. Mauricius, take your four turmae and delay them; they must not be allowed to prevent our crossing. We should reach the river in just over an hour.’
‘Yes, sir, we shall do all that is necessary.’ The cavalry prefect barked an order at his decurion and the 120 Gauls peeled away from the column and raced towards the river.
Corbulo turned to Quintus Caepio. ‘Caepio, take your turmae and keep pace with us half a mile out to the east to shield us from any cavalry threatening our flank.’
Caepio saluted and raced back down the column.
‘Gallus, get some horses for the engineers, I want them to get as many ropes as possible secured across that river. If they don’t have enough men who can swim get volunteers from the ranks.’ Gallus looked pleased with the task allotted him and galloped off to find his temporary command.
Vespasian was impressed at the calm forward thinking of his young superior; it steadied his nerves, feeling that all eventualities were being accounted for. Corbulo turned to him.
‘Vespasian, get the baggage and bring it level with the head of the column fifty paces to the west. With the rearguard gone we can’t leave it unprotected. Tell the handlers to do whatever they must to speed those mules up. I don’t want to abandon it unless absolutely necessary.’
Vespasian smiled inwardly as he saluted and made his way back down the column; it seemed that he was destined to always be around mules, one way or another.
There were less than two miles to go to the river. The baggage train had drawn level with the two cohorts, the mules having been beaten into more speed; very few had refused or bolted. Vespasian took his place next to Corbulo, who was now at the head of the first cohort; Magnus retreated a respectful distance to the left of the column.
‘The men are getting tired, Vespasian,’ Corbulo said quietly, glancing nervously at the Thracian dust cloud, now considerably closer. ‘They’ll be in sight soon. We won’t be able to stop after we’ve crossed the river, we’ll need to keep going and hope that the crossing delays the savages longer than it delays us. But what then? They will always move faster than us; they’ll catch us in a day.’
‘Perhaps we should just stand and fight, take our chances,’ Vespasian replied, instantly not liking the idea.
‘With two cohorts of veterans and the cavalry that we have, that would be the sensible course to take, but with this lot of rookies we wouldn’t stand a chance out here in the open. We need to cross that river, and then find some way to frustrate the enemy.’
With a mile to go the ground had started to fall away gently down into the shallow river valley. Copses of beech and alder populated its sides, breaking up the smooth carpet of grass, which would normally be speckled with small flocks of sheep; but today it was empty. News of the arrival of the Roman column in this peaceful vale had gone before it and the shepherds, anxious not to have their charges requisitioned for the soldiers’ cooking fires, had already hurried them to safety.
At the base of the valley flowed the swift Harpessus. Its icy water, recently released from the snowfields high in the mountains to the west, was channelled over a hard bed of shingle and bounded on either side by broken rocks. Hardy trees clung to the banks; the fast-flowing river had whittled away at the soil beneath them, forming strange archways from their exposed roots.
Ahead of them Vespasian could see the advance guard of engineers struggling chest deep in the water to secure the ropes that would aid the column across the hundred-foot width of the river. Two were already in place and a third was attached to a tree on the near bank and extended to its full length along the bank upstream. Vespasian watched as an engineer tied the loose end around his waist and then launched himself, with a strong breaststroke, against the current, keeping the rope taut. The river pushed him further away from the bank. The tension of the rope swung him across until eventually he reached the slower water near the far bank and was able to strike out for the shore, where a comrade helped him out.
As they neared the crossing point the sun sank behind the high massif of the Rhodope range, and the valley darkened as their shadow ate its way along its length.
The proximity of both the Thracian war band to their rear and a means to escape them, if only for a while, to their front caused a few of the less steady of the recruits to try to break ranks and run for the ropes. They were mercilessly beaten back into place by the vine canes of their centurions and shamed into remaining there by the reproachful glares of their comrades.
Corbulo called back to Faustus: ‘Any man who tries to push himself forward will be left on this side of the
