‘What’s this?’ cried one of the men at the table, surging to his feet. ‘Who the bloody fuck are you?’ Castus saw the centurion’s stick, the scarred and weathered face of a veteran. He pulled himself upright.
‘Aurelius Castus,’ he said. ‘Centurion. Third Cohort, Sixth Legion. You?’
The other man strode up to him, standing so close that Castus could smell his breath, his rank wine-sweat. He was a hand’s breadth shorter, but almost as heavily built.
‘Satrius Urbicus,’ the man said with a sneer in his voice. ‘Centurion. First Cohort, Second Legion. Now tell me you’ve come to apologise.’
Castus held his stare, said nothing. The blood was beating in his head, and the cuts on his ear throbbed. Urbicus edged closer, his scarred upper lip twisted back from his teeth.
‘My men came here for a quiet drink. Your savages attacked them,’ Urbicus said. ‘So you owe us an apology.’
‘I think not.’ Castus spoke in a breath. All his life he had deferred to his superiors, and Urbicus was clearly senior to him. When he glanced down he saw the injured man, Speratus, lying at his feet, his face a pulp of blood, one eye swollen shut.
‘You trying to argue with me, young man?’
The blow was sudden, a slashing upper-cut – Castus flinched, blinking, as the stick smacked against his skull.
‘You should learn to respect your elders, I’d say.’
A heartbeat’s pause, too brief to think or balance the odds. Then Castus drove his fist up into the centurion’s chest, throwing the full power of his arm behind it. Urbicus let out a tight gasp. He was caught off guard, fighting for balance. His feet skated on spilled wine and he went down hard. Castus followed him, dropping to one knee, and drove two hard accurate punches into the other man’s neck. He drew back his fist to punch again, but his arm was seized – somebody else was wrestling his chest, pulling him back. He fought against them, but he could hear the other shouts now, and sense the swirl of the mob as it parted.
Urbicus was trying to get up, but his own men had him pinned. Castus realised that Valens and Flaccus were gripping him; Diogenes had his arm tightly clasped.
‘Leave it!’ Valens was hissing in his ear. ‘The tribune’s here with troops – Infernal gods, leave it!’
Numbed, breathing hard, Castus let them drag him upright and across the room to a bench. He could make out the noise from the courtyard now, the voice of the tribune Jovianus as he called for order. Armed men were in the room: Frisiavone auxiliaries, armed with staves. Sitting on the bench, legs spread, he let out a great gasping sigh and felt the red heat of anger rushing from his body. Hollowing remorse rushed in.
Thin rain misted the paved plaza of the forum. Grey morning, sore heads, and the incense smoke from the sacrificial altar sickening men’s stomachs. The cohorts were drawn up in two facing lines, the men of the Sixth on one side and those of the Second on the other. On both sides bruised faces, raw scars. Between them, the praepositus Jovianus intoned the words into the thin smoke.
‘Sacred Concordia, Sacred Disciplina, hear our prayer and accept our sacrifice. In your name we cast aside our strife. In your name we bind ourselves in true brotherhood.’
Four elders of the Bagacum curia stood with covered heads, acting as officiating priests for the ceremony. They mumbled the prayer between them, looking far from pleased. The altar was a rough, temporary thing, a stone with a painted dedication, but money would be deducted from the funeral funds of both cohorts to pay for a stonecutter to make a proper inscription. Money would be deducted, too, to pay for the damage caused by the night’s affray.
The punishments should have been much greater, Castus knew. Two men from his own century were invalided with broken limbs, and many of the others had sprains and bruises. The cohort as a whole was down four fighting men, and the Second Legion looked to have suffered similarly. There should have been floggings at the very least for what had happened. Brawling in public with a fellow officer could have cost Castus his rank, even his life – he had risked all that for a moment’s rage, and the thought sickened him. But Jovianus had a duty to get his detachments to the army muster; he had lost men and he had lost time, and could not afford to lose more of either.
‘Soldiers,’ he cried, turning from the smoking altar. ‘Last night you disgraced the honour of your legions. The emperor has summoned you to join his campaign against the barbarians. Instead, you have turned your anger upon each other. What use does the emperor have for men who cannot control themselves? Men without discipline? Such men are not soldiers, but savages.’
He paced down the lines, tapping the ground before him with his staff. A small man with a well-groomed appearance, but his authority was palpable and his anger unfeigned. He halted at the centre of the line. To one side of him Castus stood at attention, hands clasped at his belt. To the other, Urbicus of the Second Legion held the same stance.
‘We have made a sacrifice,’ Jovianus called out, ‘to the divine spirits of Concordia and Disciplina, the presiding goddesses of the parade ground. May they restore to us the true spirit of soldiers! May they restore the brotherhood of the legions, and allow you to redeem your courage in the purity of battle!’
He gestured with his stick, and Castus took four long steps forward. Urbicus marched out to meet him. Castus could still feel the smart of his cut ear, the bruise on his temple, but he was glad to see that the other man showed more obvious marks of violence.
‘Clasp hands in good faith,’ Jovianus ordered.
Castus took a breath, then stuck out his hand. Urbicus grasped it. A squeeze of hard bone and muscle.
‘Let all strife end,’ Jovianus called out, ‘and the order of the legions prevail!’
The two centurions stepped close, shoulder against shoulder, and embraced.
In his wounded ear, Castus heard the older man’s breathing hiss.
‘If I meet you on the battlefield, you’re a dead man.’
2
On the evening of the twelfth day after leaving the coast, the men of the marching detachments came in sight of the walls of Colonia Agrippina, the great fortress city on the banks of the Rhine. The massive drum towers of the fortifications, with their decorative brickwork glowing in the low sun, were a welcome sight. The troops had marched hard since leaving Bagacum, making up for the day they had lost, but Jovianus led them away to the north of the city and on down the river another three miles to the camp ground of the field army. It was almost dark by the time the weary legionaries of VI Victrix raised their tents in the lines allotted to them.
For Castus, the end of the march was a relief. The tensions and resentment left by the riot at Bagacum had not eased, and his mood had been black for days afterwards. No matter that he was provoked, that Urbicus had struck first, no matter that he was defending his men. He had lost control of himself; he had been goaded, and had given in to blind rage – the same goading, the same rage had caused him to attack his father once. Castus had believed he had murdered the old man, and fled to join the legions. Now, with a similar uncontrolled outburst, he had almost undone all that his career in the army had given him. Some of his men had tried to thank him for coming to their aid, or to congratulate him, and he had snarled them into silence. He was not proud of his actions. He had been careful to avoid centurion Urbicus of the Second Legion too.
But the following dawn brought a sight to gladden the heart. Bright sun, a breeze driving off the last of the river mist that rose from the damp turf, and, all around, the field army of the emperor mustered for a new campaign. Thousands of leather tents in regular rows, horse lines and entrenchments, the shout of the sentries, the call of the trumpets from the command enclosure. Here, Castus knew, was the antidote to his foul mood. Here, and in the warfare to come.