Stilicho hesitated, still trying to work out what she was up to. But it was impossible: you might as well try to guess the next strike of a snake. ‘The worst,’ he admitted, ‘at least since Hannibal and Cannae. When sixty thousand men were lost in a single-’
Galla was not interested in Stilicho’s military-historical musings. ‘And Arminius was raised – raised and educated – in Rome itself, was he not?’
‘He was, Your Majesty.’
‘As was that other great enemy of Rome, King Jugurtha of Numidia?’
‘I believe so, Your Majesty.’
‘And do you think it possible that, like Jugurtha, Arminius’ early years in Rome, watching the exercises of the troops on the Campus Martius, might have given him a keen sense of his future enemy, and how they operated? So that when he came to turn upon them in that dreadful, sunless forest in the dark heart of Germany, he was very well advantaged? Thanks to what he had learnt in the heart of his enemies’ capital as a boy?’
Now Stilicho understood her game, and he feared in his heart for the wolf-cub.
He spoke slowly. ‘I think that is unlikely, Your Majesty. After all-’
Galla held her hand up. Her point had been made. ‘You may go.’
Stilicho held Galla’s hard gaze without blinking, and for far longer than was polite. And then, contrary to all Palatine protocol, he turned his back on the Imperial presence and departed without a bow.
Galla’s hands clutched the arms of her throne, tense with fury, and as cold and white as purest Carrara marble.
7
That evening, General Stilicho sat brooding in his white canvas tent on the edge of the army encampment outside the town of Falerii, beside the River Tiber. A long day’s march from Rome, but he always drove his men hard.
He was listing the priorities that faced him. First and foremost, he must face Alaric’s army in the field and defeat it. As palace whisperers said he should have done more thoroughly to the armies of Rhadagastus.
Alaric would not be easy. The barbarians no longer fought like barbarians. They fought like Romans. In the good old days, barbarian tactics on the battlefield, whether Gothic, Vandal, Pictish, Frankish, or Marcomman, had been pretty much the same wherever you went. They were as follows: 1. Group together on the battlefield any old how. Put the wives and kids in the chariots behind you to watch the show. 2. Bang your weapons and shields together, and shout insults at the enemy. Especially insult the size of his genitals. 3. And then… Chaaaaarge!
The barbarian horde of twenty or thirty thousand vainglorious individuals would rush in on the tight-packed ranks of the bristling Roman legion, numbering six thousand at the most but working together as a single ruthless unit, and the horde would be cut to pieces. All males captured or wounded were beheaded on the battlefield. Wives and kids were sold into slavery. End of story.
But now… now they fought on command, in rank and file. They turned and wheeled and switched fronts with the ease of a drilled Roman legion. And they were bloody good horsemen, too. It would not be easy. But that was what must be done first, nevertheless. Alaric’s power must be destroyed. If Uldin and his Huns could be called upon again, all well and good. If not, the Romans would have to stand alone.
Then he must return to Rome, to that nest of vipers, and, and.. . And what? In his mind, he could hear the soft, pleading voices of his closest friends urging him to seize the throne for himself. ‘For Rome,’ they said, ‘and for the sake of good government. Raise your legions and come down to Rome. The people will acclaim you.’
And then there was the heavy burden of the slim scroll that he still carried in his pouch. The knowledge that if it fell into the wrong hands…
He glanced up. It was a lieutenant of the Palatine Guard who attended him now, a high-born palace soldier in his shiny black leather breastplates. The only blood on his blade the blood of those he’d executed down in the palace cells, after a good few hours of torture. Stilicho looked sourly at him.
‘Sir?’ said the lieutenant ingratiatingly.
‘You’re dismissed,’ said the general. ‘Send me a lieutenant from one of the Frontier detachments.’
The lieutenant blanched. ‘With respect, sir, I hardly think a Frontier soldier will have the necessary manners or the knowledge of court etiquette to satisf-’
The Palatine officer felt the general’s wrath blast him full in the chest like a blow from a ballista. He staggered backwards out of the tent and hurried off to fulfil his orders, the general’s parade-ground language ringing vividly in his ears.
A few minutes later there came a rapping at the bar over the door of the tent, and the general ordered him on in. He continued to read a while. Despatches from Gaul. They did not make good reading.
When he finally looked up, he saw a tall, grey-eyed lieutenant standing in front of him, with a ragged scar across his chin.
He gave him his fiercest glare. ‘How d’you get the scar, soldier?’
The lieutenant didn’t flinch. ‘Tripped over a dog, sir.’
Stilicho looked down and then up again, his eyebrows quizzically raised. ‘Repeat.’
‘Tripped over a dog, sir. In a backstreet in Isca Dumnoniorum. Drunk as a skunk on British mead, sir. Bashed my bonce on a stone watertrough as I went down.’
Stilicho suppressed the urge to smile. He pushed back his camp stool and stood and walked over to the lieutenant. The lieutenant continued to stare straight ahead without a flicker of the eyes. Stilicho stood as tall as him, and he adopted that most unnerving of positions, to the side of his man, but just out of his field of vision. Every drill decurion’s favourite bullying point.
‘A little clumsy, eh, soldier?’
‘Damnably clumsy, sir.’
The general leant close so that he needed only whisper in the soldier’s ear. ‘Some soldiers might have had the wit to make up something a bit more… soldierly? Such as, it was an axe-stroke from a giant Rhinelander that nearly took your head off? Or a bloody great two-handed Frankish sword – but you ducked out of the way just in time, so it only nicked you on the chin? Have you no imagination, soldier?’
‘None whatsoever, sir.’ He raised his scarred chin even higher. ‘Useless memory, too, sir. Which is why I always have to tell the truth.’
Stilicho stood back and grinned. He liked what he saw and heard. He returned to his desk and waved at the canvas stool before it.
‘Sit down, soldier.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Cup of wine?’
‘No, thank you, sir. Keeps me awake at my age.’
‘What is your age?’
‘Twenty-five, sir.’
‘Hm. Wish I was twenty-five again. At my age, wine only puts me to sleep.’ The general poured himself a glass of watery wine anyhow, and sat down likewise. ‘So, how many men in your command?’
‘Just eighty, sir.’
‘A lieutenant, commanding eighty? Where’s your centurion?’
The lieutenant grinned as he thought of his centurion. ‘Still alive, sir. More scars on him than a butcher’s chopping board, but still very much alive. But I know, sir, it’s fucked-up. Pardon my language, but there’s just not… not enough… ’ He trailed off, feeling that what he was about to say was tantamount to treachery.
But Stilicho was ahead of him. ‘I know, I know,’ he said wearily. ‘Not enough men to go round. I’ve heard it all before.’ He leant forward and ran his hands over his face and brooded. Then he resumed. ‘And you’re a Brit?’
‘Sir.’
‘Married?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘So when you marched out of – where were you stationed?’
‘Isca, sir. Dumnonia.’
Stilicho nodded gravely. ‘I know it. Pretty, dark-eyed girls, they say.’
‘Dead right, sir. I married one of ’em.’