‘Remember!’ the tribune declared. ‘The success of our assault depends on you, and your men. Our emperor is depending on you. Do not give the barbarians a chance to escape your swords, or to maintain their position on the river. Strike fast, with discipline and accuracy, like true Roman soldiers, and with the aid of the gods you will prevail!’
The river appeared peaceful that evening, the broad expanse of water like burnished iron in the last of the sun. Like a well-forged sword blade, Castus thought as he watched the surface swirled and patterned by the deep, muscular currents beneath. The far bank was hazy, trees and thick undergrowth, no sign of human life at all. And in the distance wooded hills ranged across the horizon, smoky green and purple in the coming dusk.
‘How wide, do you reckon?’
‘Over two stades,’ Valens said. ‘Maybe near three. You could swim it, but I wouldn’t recommend it. That current’s slow, but it’s strong.’
They were on the riverbank, a meadow of long grass running down to the trees and high thick reeds at the water’s edge. Valens bent to rub at the ears of his dog. He had found the lean grey creature in Bagacum and it had followed him from the town and all along the route of the march. Castus was wary of it: the animal looked mangy and half-wild, and he distrusted dogs.
Out in the middle of the river, a hulk of floating timber cruised slowly downstream – an entire tree, it looked like, mostly submerged, rotted black. Not something to run into at night, Castus thought, in a small boat.
‘What do you know about the Bructeri?’ he asked. Valens had served in one of the Rhine legions before his promotion. His friend squatted beside his dog, chewing on an apple and squinting across at the barbarian shore.
‘They’re Franks,’ he said. ‘Most Franks live further downstream, in the marshes and the plains, but the Bructeri live in the hills and river valleys. Fiercest of them all, so I’ve heard. Their priests can work magic. They sacrifice their prisoners to dark gods, eat some of them… Keen archers, and they use poison on their arrows…’
Castus glanced at him. It was often impossible to know whether Valens was joking or not. ‘We’ll find out about that soon enough,’ he said quietly.
To his right, along the riverbank, Castus could see the muddy scar of the bridge-building operation. Engineers from the Eighth and Twenty-Second Legions had already driven tall wooden pilings into the bank and the shallows, and a mass of heavy flat-bottomed barges was drawn up along the shore and the slope that descended to the water. More barges would be moored upstream, and when the moment came they would be floated down with the current, each anchored and firmly secured as it arrived in position, then the timber trestles for the roadway laid across them. Castus had heard that the entire operation could be completed in half a day. He hoped he would be around to see it.
There was artillery there too, each heavy ballista mounted on a platform and aimed across the river at the point the bridge would reach on the far shore. Were there really barbarian scouts across there now? Was that silent and placid-looking woodland teeming with hostile warriors, just waiting to attack the first men across the bridge? Strange to think so. Nobody in the Roman camp had seen anything moving on the far side of the river at all.
A flight of geese flew slowly across the surface of the water, silently, vanishing into the dusk.
‘Who was the older man at the parade this morning?’ Castus asked. ‘Standing with the emperor and his party. He had a beard, red face.’
‘You don’t know?’ Valens said with a sideways smile. He took a big bite of his apple, chewed and swallowed.
‘No, I don’t.’
‘That, my remarkably solid-headed friend, is the man whose image you saluted for thirteen years!’
Castus blinked slowly, then looked back at the river. Of the four emperors who had ruled the Roman world when he had first become a soldier, he had seen three in the flesh: Diocletian and Galerius on the Danube and the Persian campaign, and Constantius in Britain. Only one was a stranger to him.
‘That was Maximian?’
‘Indeed it was. Marcus Aurelius Valerius Maximianus, the Man like Hercules, formerly supreme Augustus of the western empire. Nowadays father-in-law of our own supreme Augustus, Constantine.’
‘How did you know?’
‘He was commander-in-chief when I served with the First Minervia,’ Valens said with a shrug. ‘Still, it took me a while to recognise him. He looks so… old now. But it must take it out of a man, being driven away by your own son, having to go begging for shelter from your son-in-law…’ His friend had a crafty look, Castus thought. Some knowledge he wanted to share.
‘Tell me about it.’
‘His son is Maxentius, the usurper who’s seized Rome,’ Valens said. ‘So Maxentius calls the old man out of retirement to help him run things – plus there’s an army advancing on the city, and he hopes having his father at his side’ll swing the enemy troops to his cause. It worked well enough – Maxentius saw off two expeditions against him, first by Flavius Severus and then by Galerius, and got his sister wedded to Constantine in a marriage pact.’
For a moment Valens paused, listening to the quiet sounds of the river in the reeds. It felt grubby, even vaguely disloyal, Castus thought, to be discussing the affairs of emperors like this, but he wanted to know more.
‘Anyway,’ Valens went on in a lower voice, ‘it didn’t take long before father and son fell out about who was the top dog in Rome. Old Maximian thought he should be senior, but the Praetorians and the senate had acclaimed Maxentius first, so when his father tried to depose the son, they supported their man instead. There was a most undignified scene, a public quarrel, and Maximian had to run for his life.’
‘And he came back here?’
Valens nodded slowly. ‘Can you credit that? This is the man who used to rule half the world, reduced to a fugitive, running for favours from his daughter’s husband. He expected, I suppose, that a lot of Constantine’s older officials would owe him their loyalty. He’s still a powerful man, in Gaul at least.’
Castus said nothing. Part of him believed that such things were none of his concern. Another part recognised that anyone could see the danger in this situation.
‘And what’s his role here now? Maximian’s, I mean.’
‘Esteemed former Augustus? Imperial advisor-in-chief? Glorious father-in-law? Who knows?’ Valens stood upright and brushed the grass from his tunic. ‘I reckon Constantine wants to keep the old man close because he doesn’t trust what he might do otherwise. Praise him, honour him, and watch him as you watch a snake.’
Castus stiffened, as if something had brushed the nape of his neck, and for a moment he feared a presentiment, some evil prophecy creeping from the gathering darkness. He shrugged it off. It was a memory; that was alclass="underline" two years ago, in Britain, he had strayed dangerously close to the intrigues of empire. Since then his life, and his loyalties, had been simple.
‘Don’t worry, brother,’ Valens said. He tossed the apple core out into the water. ‘These matters are not for the likes of us. Tomorrow night we cross the river and face the barbarians – like the tribune said, the purity of the battle is our business!’
The dog whined, and Valens scrubbed his fingers under its jaw; then the two men turned back towards the camp.
3
A warm night, the still air damp and greasy, and the men were sweating by the time they reached the boats. They wore no body armour, only helmets and their rust-brown tunics, and their shields were fitted with leather marching-covers to hide the bright emblems. Their swordbelts, javelins and spears were wrapped with rags to muffle the clink and scrape of metal. Even so, as they slumped down on the riverbank after their four-mile march in the darkness, the noise was clear and unmistakeable. Five hundred soldiers, Castus thought to himself, are incapable of moving silently.