“I would like to see them earlier, if that is possible,” I said.
He gave me an unhappy look, and I saw that I wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near Condercum until the legate had arrived with more Roman troops. “I’ll write Condercum about it,” the prefect promised, to pacify me.
The prefect invited us to spend the night in Corstopitum, and was taken aback when Comittus told him that my men wouldn’t sleep in barracks. “The Sarmatians at Condercum do,” he said in surprise. We declined to squeeze in beside his own men, and rode back to Cilurnum. Comittus rode in silence most of the way. When we turned north along the river, I saw that he was crying.
“Had you never seen a battle before?” I asked him quietly. He had been very white and silent since it ended.
He shook his head. “No. Oh gods! Was it that obvious?”
“Not so very much. Nearly all men are nervous beforehand. But if they have seen war before, they are less dismayed afterward.”
He sniffed. “I’d never realized… and… damn it, Ariantes, you know what they’re going to do with the prisoners we took?”
“The arenas?” I asked. That was what the Romans had always done with their Sarmatian prisoners.
He nodded. “Damn it! Poor wretches. I know they started it, but poor, miserable men.” He looked up and met my eyes. “You probably don’t have any idea what it looked like. Gods and goddesses, you were like… like those reaping machines they use in the South. No, like meat grinders. Nothing human, anyway. Sweeping down on those poor miserable savages, chopping them up, and trampling over them while they screamed. It was horrible!”
“Yes. Who were they?”
He rubbed his face. “Mostly Selgovae. I recognized the emblems of a couple of their chiefs. And some Votadini-they were the ones with the hawk emblem painted on their faces. And that’s an odd thing: the southern Votadini don’t usually cooperate with the Selgovae. They’ve fought a lot in the past, and they have so many blood debts back and forth that they can hardly make a truce even when they want to.”
I was silent for a minute. “It was an odd thing in many ways. They must have known that there was… trouble in the Roman camp.”
He gave me a look I couldn’t interpret. “They did know,” he said, after a pause and in a whisper. “I heard them talking about it as the Thracians were tying them up and taking them off. But…” And he lowered his voice still further, so that I had to lean half off my horse and strain my ears to hear it. “But I don’t see how they could have gathered their forces in time, particularly with all those blood feuds to settle-unless they knew about it before it happened.”
“Perhaps there was trouble earlier, which we did not hear about,” I said, after a pause. “As Facilis said, we are the last people who would be informed of trouble in Condercum.”
“By Maponus! That’s true!” exclaimed Comittus, brightening. There had clearly been another possibility that had worried him before. I suspected it myself, but in a vague way, not happy with details. I was quite certain that Gatalas wouldn’t have been able to coordinate his mutiny with an invasion even if he’d wanted to: we were all of us too alien to this world to play its factions. But then, Gatalas’ mutiny didn’t sound planned at alclass="underline" it had the feel of a desperate gesture undertaken to revenge his honor. Why? What had happened? Plainly he had been forced to bow lower to Roman discipline than I had, if he’d been obliged to use barracks. But that would not have been enough to make him resort to mutiny. He’d swallowed Facilis’ insults all the way from Aquincum and had only threatened to rebel at the ocean crossing because he thought it a death trap. He’d hoped for glory in war, for a battle like the one I’d just fought. And still, he must have had some residual faith in the Romans, or he would not have ordered his men to surrender when he rode out with his bodyguard to die.
Danger from lies, the rods had warned in Bononia. I suspected, though still vaguely, that someone had lied to Gatalas, someone with contacts among the Pictish tribes-and from Comittus’ unhappiness I guessed that the same thought had crossed his mind as well. And without details, without proof, like a man listening to echoes in the darkness, I wondered if the legate would bring his lady with him when he came from Eburacum.
VII
Julius Priscus arrived in Corstopitum five days later, and summoned Comittus, Facilis, and myself at once. We left Leimanos and Longus in charge of the fort, and rode down with my bodyguard. I also brought Eukairios. The scribe had ridden to the town a couple of times on his own, with letters, and he no longer fell off a horse unless the horse actively wanted to get rid of him. He still disliked being on horseback, but he wanted to visit the town to meet his “correspondent” there. I hadn’t inquired too deeply about this person, since it was easy to guess he was another Christian, and it was better not to know any of the illegal details. I guessed that Eukairios must have been given the name and a password in Londinium, or perhaps in Eburacum. Whoever the man was, I was grateful to him.
When we arrived, we found that the legate had brought half his legion with him, more than enough troops to deal with any trouble, and had summoned Gaius Valerius Victor and another senior Roman from Condercum. He had also brought Arshak, but not Arshak’s men. And he had indeed brought his wife. Aurelia Bodica sat beside her husband while the rest of us stood in the main hall of Corstopitum headquarters, and discussed the question Priscus had come there to resolve-“What should we do about the Sarmatians?” I suppose it was a major concession, which we owed to the Pictish defeat, that Arshak and I were allowed to participate. But it didn’t feel that way at the time. It felt to me as though I were on trial.
“A hundred and twenty-four Roman soldiers dead!” said the legate, much as Facilis had, except he had the exact figure. “And why? Because the bloodthirsty savage who commanded the Fourth Sarmatians had somehow taken it into his head that he was going to be demoted and replaced! Who told him that, eh?” And he glared at me.
“My lord legate,” I said, stunned by the accusation, “if that was true, I had heard nothing of it; and if it was false, I am the last man to spread lies about it.”
“You were in Dubris before the others,” snapped Priscus. “You were the one who said there’d be a mutiny if we went through with our original plans to make your troops regular auxiliaries. And you are the one who has a scribe, and has been deluging my office with letters and bribing my staff.” It was true, I had-mostly in an attempt to improve the pay of my men.
“Yes, sir. But I did not write to Gatalas. He did not have a scribe and could not read.”
“He could have found someone to read him a letter easily enough! You were dissatisfied with your troop’s pay; it seems to me very likely you were complaining to him. I told you before that if I was sure you were making trouble, I’d have you flogged to death. As it is, if your troop hadn’t defeated those tribesmen…”
He let the threat hang. “Sir,” I said, trying to keep my voice level, “if I have been concerned at my men’s pay, it is because I wish at all costs to avoid trouble. At the present level of pay they will get into debt, and if they are in debt, they may act wildly. I said nothing to any Sarmatian about your plan to make us regular auxiliaries under Roman officers: I believed that you had abandoned it, and to spread any rumor of it would only stir resentment.” I glanced quickly at Arshak. The revelation didn’t seem to surprise him. He must have heard it when the trouble first caught fire. He looked well, better than I’d expected. I’d been afraid to find him worn with tension, restless as a caged hawk, but he was sleek and golden and arrogant as ever-though the coat he was wearing was his plain one.
“Ariantes is telling the truth,” Facilis put in, suddenly and unexpectedly. “He’s had no contact whatever with Condercum, and he’s not the man to stir up trouble if he had. He knows perfectly well that his own people would be the losers in any contest with the legions, and he’ll go to any lengths to protect them. Javolenus Comittus and I were both with him when he got the news of the mutiny: he was shocked by it, and his first thought was to calm his own people down. If Gatalas believed he was going to be replaced as commander, it’s probably because he heard some rumor, or misinterpreted something somebody said. Had he had a lot of disputes with you, Tribune?”