British fleet. I can use my own judgment about how to get these barbarians across the Channel, and it seems to me that if I go clapping chains on their leaders, the men will be sure to mutiny.” (In the back of my mind I made a note that, although Facilis called him dominus, “sir,” he addressed Facilis by his first two names, informally: he spoke with the confidence of noble birth and high rank, and the centurion was forced to honor that.)
“You don’t know anything about them!” Facilis said. “You seem to think they’re like the Gauls or the Germans, nice safe conquered barbarians, who’ll more or less do as they’re told if you treat them kindly! Sarmatians are different. They’ve taken it into their heads that we’ve tricked them and mean to murder them, and they’ll try to hit us hard while we’re not looking. I’d stake my sword on it they’ve managed to hide some weapons in those wagons, for all our precautions, and they’re sitting about their fires now plotting how to kill us.”
He was perfectly correct on that.
“Really!” exclaimed the procurator in disgust, turning away from the window. “I seem to recall hearing that our invincible emperor did conquer them, by the favor of the immortal gods.”
“His ‘Thundering Victory,’ ” Facilis answered, in a tone of equal disgust. “Yes. I was there. But maybe you haven’t heard the details of what came before that victory. They’d been raiding us for years-they thought it was a brave and manly thing to slip across the Danube with a troop of cavalry and steal the flocks and property of Romans, killing anyone who got in their way. They weren’t afraid of us in the least. The cities cried out to the emperor as the raids got worse and worse, and the emperor decided to settle the Sarmatians for good. For a year we fought. We caught a raiding party on the Danube in the winter, and fought a battle actually on the ice of the river-but that only meant that the next raiding parties were bigger. We negotiated and got nowhere, and at last we set off to conquer the Sarmatians, with all the Danube legions, detachments from all the western legions and some of the eastern ones, more auxiliaries than I could count, and the emperor himself as commander. Twice the number of their army, at least; three, four times their number. We marched out into the plains-and found no one. You can’t besiege their cities, because they don’t have any; you can’t burn their crops to force them to give battle, because they don’t have any of those, either. They keep herds and live in wagons.
“We had reports, though, that their king was in the northeast of the country, and his army with him, so we marched on. And when we’d gone a long way, they attacked our supply train and chopped our rear guard to pieces, cutting us off. We sent out foraging parties, looking for food and water, and sometimes the foraging parties came back, and sometimes they didn’t. I’ve been out myself, and come across a dip in the hills and found a party of thirty lads lying there, shot full of arrows, with everything stripped off them but their tunics, and their skulls looking like peeled grapes-and all the hills around empty, just grass and dust. Didn’t you see the scalps hanging from their horses’ bridles when they came in? Arshak has thirty-seven, ten on the bridle and the rest stitched onto his coat, all from Roman soldiers he’s killed with his own hands-and he’d love to add mine to his collection. Jupiter! he would!”
“Those tassels on the bridles?” said the procurator. “Those are scalps? I thought…”
“Those are scalps. It’s a custom of theirs. But that was just playing with us. One night when we were making camp, their army turned up. Good! we thought. Our turn at last! I tell you, sir, the heavy cavalry rode right over us. Twice. They used the lance on the way there, and the long swords on the way back, and all the while the light cavalry rained arrows on us. Twenty men I lost from my century that day, and the rest ran into our camp as soon as it was built, and hid. Next day we tried to retreat-and we couldn’t. We managed to reach a patch of hills, the one damned patch of hills in that whole dry plain, and there we sat like a weasel up a tree, perishing of thirst, and didn’t dare come down. And we would have died there, all of us, if the gods hadn’t favored the emperor and sent the most torrential thunderstorm. The horses slipped in the mud, and we rushed out and caught them. By Mars, it was sweet, to catch them on the ground for once! They had enough fighting pretty quickly then, and galloped off, and a party of our auxiliary cavalry went after them and found one of their base camps, where they had some of their herds and some of the women and children: we drove off the herds and killed the bitches and their brats, and that was our Thundering Victory!
“It hurt them, all right, hurt them enough that they started begging us for peace. But they’re not conquered yet. You can’t conquer a people who don’t build cities: it’s like trying to carry water in your hands. The emperor thought of exterminating the whole horde of them. But it would have taken time to catch them all, and by then he had no time, and a rebellion in the East screaming for his attention. So when they offered to give us eight thousand troops if we went away, the emperor accepted, with the provision that all the troops had to be heavy cavalry. He wanted the troops-we’d all seen how good they were-and he knew that if we had them, they wouldn’t. Only the important men, what they call azatani, can afford armor: the commoners fight as mounted archers. To get eight thousand heavy cavalry, they had to send us practically every nobleman between the ages of sixteen and thirty-the very men who’d started the whole war with their raids across the Danube, and who’d poured out rivers of our blood. They won’t start any wars now until the next generation grows up. But there’s no province of Sarmatia yet, and while there’s a Sarmatian alive, there never will be. There’ll be more wars, in ten, fifteen years’ time, and this lot know that just as well as I do.”
“Yet they’ve been disarmed, and come quietly all the way from Aquincum.”
“I’ve already said: they’re not as thoroughly disarmed as I’d like, and I’ve heard of them killing armed opponents with just a rope and a dagger. And they won’t come quietly now. Sir, I know they’re planning to mutiny. You’ve got to step on them hard. There’ll be another four thousand of them coming through Bononia next year, and if you let this lot cause trouble, you’ll have trouble with them all.”
That made me blink. We hadn’t been told where our fellows were being sent. So, another four thousand of us were also on their way to Britain? I wondered if they included my sister’s husband. I wondered how my sister was managing, overseeing the cattle alone. The picture of her, riding out to check on the herds, with little Saios bouncing on the saddle in front of her, suddenly seemed more real than the courtyard of the procurator’s house and the voices in the room behind me.
“They’re vicious brutes,” Facilis was urging. “They don’t respect anything but force. You need to show them you’re stronger than they are. You need to break their spirit.”
“And you think I should arrest… who?” asked the procurator, resignedly.
“All the squadron captains,” Facilis said promptly. “All forty-eight of ’em. And the three company commanders, the prince-commanders of the dragons-them especially. They’re all from the great families, what they call the scepter-holders. The rest of the men are their dependants.”
The procurator winced and turned away from the window. “If that’s true, Marcus Flavius, it seems to me that their men are almost certainly going to mutiny if we arrest them. I would expect my own clients to defend me, in such circumstances. There’ll be bloodshed.”
“But if we arrange it right, it will be Sarmatian blood, not Roman,” returned Facilis.
“Marcus Flavius, I’d rather no blood was shed, Sarmatian or Roman! It would reflect very badly on me if I couldn’t get these people across the Channel without killing half of them. The thing I’d expect to do would be… well, talk to the most reasonable of the company commanders, win his support. Set him against the other two, if need be-divide and rule, eh? Calm them down, give them a few days to realize that we’re not tricking them or planning to murder them, and then ship them across quietly.”
“A reasonable Sarmatian commander?” said Facilis. “Sir, that’s a contradiction in terms. I wouldn’t trust any of the bastards. Look at them! There’s Arshak, the king’s nephew: he’d rather kill Romans than feast on figs and sweet wine, and he hates me. Then there’s Gatalas. He was green with fear at the sight of the sea this afternoon, but by reputation he’s a lunatic of a fighter and completely unpredictable-you won’t win him over. And then there’s Ariantes, the quiet one: I trust him least of all. He’s clever, and he’s led more and worse raids into Roman lands than either of the others. Give them a few days and they’ll hatch some plan to slaughter the lot of us. Arrest them, search the wagons for weapons, and give a good flogging to anyone caught hiding arms and anyone who resists.”
I’d heard enough. If the procurator followed this advice, I’d end up with half my men dead trying to free me. Perhaps that was what Facilis wanted. I stood up. “Flavius Facilis!” I called, going to the window as though I’d only just arrived in the courtyard. “Lord Procurator! May I speak with you?”
The procurator jumped back from the window like a man who’s put his hand in a hole and found a snake there. “Who are you?” he demanded. He had not particularly noticed me when I came into the camp. Arshak had done all the talking.
Facilis answered that question for me. “Ariantes!” he exclaimed, pushing past the procurator, gripping the window frame and glaring at me. “How long have you been listening?”
