Centurion Read online

  CHAPTER TWO

  ‘This is as good as life gets.’ Macro smiled as he leaned back against the wall of the Bountiful Amphora, his usual drinking hole, and stretched his legs out in front of him. ‘Finally, I got my posting to Syria. You know what, Cato?’

  ‘What?’ His companion stirred and blinked his eyes open.

  ‘It’s every bit as good as I hoped it would be.’ Macro shut his eyes and relished the warmth of the sun on his weathered face. ‘Good wines, fairly priced women who know a trick or two and fine dry weather. There’s even a decent library.’

  ‘I’d never have thought you’d take an interest in books,’ said Cato. In recent months Macro had nearly sated his epicurean desires and had taken to reading. Admittedly his preference was for bawdy comedies and erotica, but, Cato reasoned, at least he was reading something and there was a chance that it might lead to more challenging material.

  Macro smiled. ‘This is a good enough spot for now. A warm climate and warm women. I tell you, after that campaign in Britain I never want to see another Celt as long as I live.’

  ‘Too right,’ Centurion Cato murmured with feeling as he recalled the cold, the damp and the mist-wreathed marshes through which he and Macro, and the men of the Second Legion, had fought their way across the Empire’s most recent acquisition. ‘Still, it wasn’t so bad in the summer.’

  ‘Summer?’ Macro frowned. ‘Ah, you must mean that handful of days we had between winter and autumn.’

  ‘You wait. A few months on campaign in the desert and you’ll look back on those times in Britain as if it was Elysium.’

  ‘That may be,’ Macro mused as he recalled their previous posting on the frontier of Judaea, in the middle of a wasteland. He shook off the memory. ‘But for now, I have a cohort to command, a prefect’s pay and the prospect of a decent rest before we have to risk life and limb for the Emperor, the Senate and People of Rome’ – he intoned the official slogan wryly – ‘by which I mean that sly, conniving bastard, Narcissus.’

  ‘Narcissus …’ Repeating the name of Emperor Claudius’ private secretary, Cato sat up and turned to his friend. He lowered his voice. ‘Still no reply from him. He must have read our report by now.’

  ‘Yes.’ Macro shrugged. ‘So?’

  ‘So, what do you think he will do about the governor?’

  ‘Cassius Longinus? Oh, he’ll be all right. Longinus has covered his tracks well enough. There’s no firm evidence to link him to any treachery and you can be sure that he’ll do his level best to be the Emperor’s most loyal servant now that he knows he’s being watched.’

  Cato glanced round the customers sitting at the nearest table and leaned closer to Macro. ‘Given that we are the men Narcissus sent to watch Longinus, I doubt that the governor would shed any tears over our deaths. We have to be careful.’

  ‘He can hardly have us killed.’ Macro sniffed. ‘That would look too suspicious. Relax, Cato, we’re doing just fine.’ He stretched out his arms, cracked his shoulder and then tucked his hands behind his head with a contented yawn.

  Cato regarded him for a moment, wishing that Macro would not dismiss the danger posed by Cassius Longinus so easily. A few months earlier the governor of Syria had requested that another three legions be transferred to his command to counter the growing threat of a revolt in Judaea. With a force that size at his back Longinus would have posed a serious threat to the Emperor. It was Cato’s conviction that Longinus had been preparing to make a play for the imperial throne. Thanks to Macro and Cato the revolt had been crushed before it could spread across the province, and Longinus had been deprived of the need for his extra legions. No man as powerful as Longinus would easily forgive those who had frustrated his ambitions and Cato had been living in wary anticipation of revenge for several months. But now the governor faced a real threat from the growing menace of Parthia, with only the Third, Sixth and Tenth Legions and their attached auxiliary cohorts to confront the enemy. If war came to the eastern provinces then every available man would be needed to face the Parthians. Cato sighed. It was ironic that the threat from Parthia was welcome. That should divert the governor’s mind from thoughts of revenge for a while at least. Cato drained his cup and leaned back against the wall, staring out across the city.

  The sun was close to the horizon and the roof tiles and domes of Antioch were gleaming in the brilliant hue of the fading light. The centre of the city, like most of those that had fallen under Roman control, and before that to the Greek heirs of Alexander the Great’s conquests, was filled with the kind of public buildings that were to be found right across the Empire. Beyond the lofty columns of the temples and porticoes, the city gave way to a jumble of fine townhouses and sprawling slums of grimy flat-roofed buildings. In those streets the air was ripe with the smells of densely packed humanity. That was where most of the off-duty soldiers spent their time. But Cato and Macro preferred the relative comfort of the Bountiful Amphora where its slightly elevated position took advantage of any breeze that wafted over the city.

  They had been drinking for most of the afternoon and Cato began to doze off into the warm embrace of weary contentment. For the last month they had been relentlessly drilling their auxiliary cohort, the Second Illyrian, in the huge army camp outside the walls of Antioch. The cohort was Macro’s first command as prefect and he was determined that his men would turn out smartly and march faster and fight harder than any other cohort in the army of the eastern Empire. Macro’s task had been made more difficult by the fact that nearly a third of the men were raw recruits – replacements for those lost in the fight at Fort Bushir. As the army had been placed on a war footing every cohort commander had been scouring the region for men to bring their units up to full strength.

  While Cato had taken charge of the cohort’s training and set about ordering the necessary equipment and supplies, Macro had tramped up and down the coast from Pieria to Caesarea in search of recruits. He took ten of the toughest soldiers with him, and the cohort’s standard. In each town and port Macro had set up a stall in the forum and delivered his pitch to an audience of the idle and restless men who were to be found in every town square across the Empire. In a booming parade-ground voice he promised them an enlistment bounty, decent pay, regular meals, a life of adventure and, if they should live to see it, the award of Roman citizenship when they were demobbed after the small formality of twenty-five years’ service. With a bit of training they would look every bit as impressive and manly as the soldiers standing behind Macro. When he had finished a motley crowd of hopefuls would approach the stall and Macro took the healthiest specimens and turned away all those who were unfit or witless or too old. In the first few towns he was able to pick and choose, but as the recruitment tour wore on he found that other officers had been before him and had already taken the best men. Even so, by the time he returned to the cohort, he had enough men to bring it up to full strength, and sufficient time to train them before any campaign could begin.

  Macro spent the long winter months drilling the new recruits while Cato put the rest of the men through gruelling route marches and weapons practice. As the Second Illyrian trained, a steady stream of other units arrived at Antioch and joined the growing camp outside the fortress of the Tenth Legion. With them came throngs of camp-followers and the avenues and markets of Antioch resounded with the cries of street vendors. Every inn was filled with soldiers and queues of men waited outside the brightly painted brothels which reeked of cheap incense and sweat.

  As the sun set over the city, Cato’s gaze took all this in without any sense of judgement. Although he was barely in his twenties he had already served four and half years in the army and had grown used to the ways of soldiers and the effect they had on the towns they passed through. Despite an unpromising start Cato had turned out to be a good soldier, as even he was prepared to admit. Quick wits and courage had played their part in transforming him from a pampered product of the imperial household into a commander of men. Luck had played its
part too. He had been fortunate to find himself appointed to Macro’s century when he had joined the Second Legion, he reflected. If Centurion Macro had not recognised some potential in the thin, nervous-looking recruit from Rome, and taken him under his wing, then Cato had little doubt that he would not have survived for long on the German frontier, and the campaign that followed in Britain. Since then the two of them had left the Second Legion and had served briefly in the navy before being sent east to join Macro’s present command. In the coming campaign they would be fighting as part of an army again and Cato felt some small relief that the burdens of independent command would be lifted from their shoulders: relief tempered by instinctive concerns about the realities of entering a new campaign.

  Far better soldiers than Cato had been struck down by an arrow, slingshot or sword thrust they had not seen coming. So far he had been spared, and he hoped that his good luck would continue if there was a war against Parthia. He had fought the Parthians briefly the year before and well knew their accuracy with a bow, and the speed with which they could mount a sudden attack and then melt away before the Romans could respond. It was a style of fighting that would sorely test the men of the legions, let alone those of the Second Illyrian cohort.

  Or perhaps that was not fair, Cato reflected. The men of his cohort actually had a better chance against the Parthians than the legionaries. They wore lighter armour and a quarter of them were mounted, so that the Parthians would have to be far more wary in attacking the cohort than in any assault they mounted on the slow-marching heavy infantry of the legions. Cassius Longinus would have to proceed cautiously against the Parthians if he were to avoid the fate of Marcus Crassus and his six legions nearly a hundred years earlier. Crassus had blundered into the desert and after several days of harassing attacks under the pitiless glare of the sun his army had been cut to pieces, along with its general.

  As the sun finally sank below the horizon there was a distant blare of bucinas from the army camp announcing the first watch of the night. Macro stirred and eased himself away from the rough plaster of the wall.

  ‘Better get back to the camp. I’m taking the new boys out into the desert tomorrow. Their first time. It’ll be interesting to see how they cope.’

  ‘Best to go easy on them,’ Cato suggested. ‘We can’t afford to lose any before the campaign begins.’

  ‘Go easy on ’em?’ Macro frowned. ‘Will I fuck. If they can’t hack it now, then they never will when the real fighting starts.’

  Cato shrugged. ‘I thought we needed every man.’

  ‘Every man, yes. But not one makeweight.’

  Cato was silent for a moment. ‘This is not the Second Legion, Macro. We can’t expect too much from the men of an auxiliary cohort.’

  ‘Really?’ Macro’s expression hardened. ‘The Second Illyrian ain’t just any cohort. It’s my cohort. And if I want the men to march, fight and die as hard as the men of the legions, then they will do it. Understand?’

  Cato nodded.

  ‘And you will do your part in making that happen.’

  Cato’s back stiffened. ‘Of course I will, sir. Have I ever let you down?’

  They stared at each other for a moment before Macro suddenly laughed and clapped his friend on the shoulder. ‘Not yet! You’ve got balls of solid iron, boy. I just hope the rest of the men can match you.’

  ‘So do I,’ Cato replied evenly.

  Macro rose to his feet and rubbed his buttocks, which had lost a little feeling after some hours on the hard wooden bench of the inn. He picked up his centurion’s vine stick. ‘Let’s go.’

  They set off through the forum, already filling with brothel touts and sellers of trinkets and the first of the off-duty soldiers from the camp. Fresh-faced recruits hung together in loud packs as they made for the nearest bars, where they would be fleeced by experienced conmen and swindlers who knew them for what they were and had all manner of petty rackets at their fingertips. Cato felt a twinge of pity for the recruits but knew that only experience would teach them what they needed to know. A few sore heads and the loss of their purses would ensure they kept their wits about them in the future, if they lived long enough.

  As ever, there was a strict division between the men of the legions and those of the auxiliary cohorts. The legionaries were paid far more and tended to regard the non-citizen soldiers of the Empire with a degree of professional disdain – a sentiment which Cato could understand, and Macro wholly agreed with. The feeling extended beyond the camp and into the streets of Antioch where the men from the cohorts generally kept a respectful distance from the legionaries. But not all of them, it seemed. As Cato and Macro turned on to one of the streets leading from the forum they heard an angry exchange of shouts a short distance ahead. Beneath the glow of a large copper lamp hanging over the entrance to a bar a small crowd had gathered round two men who had tumbled out into the street and now rolled in the gutter in a mad flurry of blows.

  ‘There’s trouble,’ Macro grumbled.

  ‘Want to give it a miss?’

  Macro watched the fight for a moment as they approached and then shrugged. ‘Don’t see why we should get involved. Let ’em sort it out amongst themselves.’

  Just then there was a brief fiery glimmer in the hand of one of the fighting men and someone cried out, ‘He’s got a knife!’

  ‘Shit,’ Macro growled. ‘Now we’re involved. Come on!’

  He increased his pace, and thrust aside some of the other men who had come out of the bar to investigate the commotion.

  ‘Oi!’ A burly man in a red tunic turned on Macro. ‘Watch where you’re going there!’

  ‘Hold your tongue!’ Macro raised his vine stick so that the man, and all the others, could see it, and pushed his way through to the men fighting in the gutter. ‘Break it up, you two! That’s an order.’

  There was one final scuffle and a deep explosive grunt and then the men rolled apart. One, a thin wiry man in a legionary tunic, moved like a cat on to his feet and rose in a crouch, ready to continue the fight in an instant. Macro rounded on him, brandishing his vine stick.

  ‘It’s over, I said.’

  Then Cato saw the small blade in the man’s hand. It no longer glittered, but was obscured by a dark film that dripped from the point. On the ground the second man had risen up on his elbow while his other hand clutched at his side. He gasped for breath and winced in agony.

  ‘Fuck … Oh, shit it hurts … Bastard’s stuck me.’

  He glared at the legionary for an instant, then groaned in pain and slumped back on the ground in the wan glow of the lamp overhead.

  ‘I know him,’ Cato said softly. ‘He’s one of ours. Caius Menathus, from one of the cavalry squadrons.’ He knelt down beside the man and felt for the wound. The auxiliary’s tunic was sodden with the warm gush of blood when the knife had been withdrawn and Cato glanced up at the men clustered round.

  ‘Get back!’ he ordered. ‘Give me some room!’

  Cato had left his vine cane at the camp, and his youth caused some of the veterans to hesitate to obey his command. But the men from the Second Illyrian, Menathus’ companions, recognised their officer and drew back at once. After a brief moment the others followed suit and Cato turned again to the injured man. The tear in the cloth was small but the blood was flowing freely, and Cato quickly pulled the tunic up to expose the red-smeared flesh of the man’s torso. A faintly puckered wound, like a small mouth, glistened in the glow of the lamp and disgorged a steady pulse of blood. Cato clamped his hand over the wound and pressed hard as he glanced up at the nearest men.

  ‘Get a board of wood, something to carry him on, now! And you, run back to the camp and get hold of a surgeon and send him to the hospital. He’s to be ready for us the moment this man arrives. Tell him Menathus has been stabbed.’

  ‘Yes, sir!’ The auxiliary saluted and turned away, running down the street towards the town gates.

  As Cato turned back to Menathus, Macro stepped cautiously towards
the legionary holding the knife. The man had backed away from the crowd towards the opposite side of the street and was still in a crouch, eyes staring wildly as Macro approached him.

  Macro smiled and held out his hand. ‘That’s enough trouble for tonight, son. Give me the knife, before you do any more damage.’

  The legionary shook his head. ‘Bastard had it coming to him.’

  ‘I’m sure he did. We’ll sort it all out later. Now give me the knife.’

  ‘No. You’ll have me arrested.’ The man’s voice was slurred with drink.

  ‘Arrested?’ Macro snorted. ‘That’s the least of your troubles. Drop the knife before you make it worse for yourself.’

  ‘You don’t understand.’ The legionary waved the knife towards the man on the ground. ‘He cheated me. In a game of dice.’

  ‘Bollocks!’ a voice cried out. ‘He won fair and square.’

  There was a chorus of angry agreement, matched a moment later by furious denials.

  ‘SILENCE!’ Macro roared.

  At once the men stilled their tongues. Macro glared round at them and then returned his attention to the man with the knife. ‘What’s your name, rank and unit, legionary?’

  ‘Marcus Metellus Crispus, optio, fourth century, second cohort, Tenth Legion, sir!’ the man rattled out automatically. He even attempted to stiffen to attention as he said it, but staggered drunkenly to one side after a moment.

  ‘Optio, give me the knife. That’s an order.’

  Crispus shook his head. ‘I ain’t going in the guardhouse for that cheating bastard.’