The Eagle and the Wolves

'No!' Macro said firmly. 'We go soft on them now and discipline goes down the shithole. It's hard, but no harder than is necessary. If they're complaining about being sent to sleep early then they're obviously not tired enough. Tomorrow I'll end the training with a run round Calleva instead of a march. That should do the trick.'

It did, but there was still an underlying resentment evident in the men's faces as Cato did his rounds each morning. Something was lacking. There was a vague sense of looseness, of incohesion, in the two cohorts. He raised the matter with Macro and Tincommius as they met in Macro's quarters one night after the first week of training.

'We're not doing this quite right.'

'What do you mean?' grumbled Macro. 'We're doing fine.'

'We were told to train two cohorts, and we've done it as best as we can. But they need something else.'

'What then?'

'You've seen how the men are. They're keen enough to learn how to use our weapons and manoeuvre as we do. But they don't have any sense of themselves as a discrete body of soldiers. We've got our legions, our eagle standards, our sense of tradition. They've got nothing.'

'What are you suggesting?' Macro smirked. 'We give them an eagle to follow?'

'Yes. Something like that. A standard. One for each cohort. It'll help give them a sense of identity.'

'Maybe,' Macro conceded. 'But not an eagle. Those are reserved for the legions. Has to be something else.'

'All right, then.' Cato nodded and turned to Tincommius. 'What do you suggest? Are there any animals that are sacred to your tribe?'

'Plenty.' Tincommius started counting them off on his fingers. 'Owl, wolf, fox, boar, pike, stoat.'

'Stoat?' Macro laughed. 'What the fuck is sacred about the stoat?'

'Stoat – swift and sleek, king of stream and creek,' Tincommius intoned.

'Oh, great. I can see it now: First Cohort of Atrebatan Stoats. The enemy will piss themselves laughing.'

Tincommius coloured.

'All right, so perhaps we don't use the stoat idea,' Cato interrupted before Macro caused too much damage to Atrebatan sensitivities. 'I like the idea of wolf and boar. Nice sense of wildness and danger. What do you think, Tincommius?'

'The Wolves and the Boars… sounds good.'

'What about you, Macro?'

'Fine.'

'All right then, I'll have some standards made up tonight. With your permission?'

Macro nodded. 'Agreed.'

Footsteps sounded down the corridor outside, and there was a rap on the door.

'Enter!'

A clerk stepped into the glow of the oil lamps. He held out a sealed scroll.

'What is it?'

'Message from the general, sir. Courier's just arrived.'

'Here!' Macro reached for the scroll, broke open the seal and ran his eyes over the message while his companions sat in silence. While Macro could read well enough, it was still something of an effort, and it took a moment to digest the contents of General Plautius' dispatch, as framed in the needlessly ornate language of staff officers with more time on their hands than they know what to do with.

'Well,' he drawled at length, 'apart from a few reservations about our scope of operations, and caveats about the amount of men we place under arms, it seems that the general has given us permission to arm the, uh, Wolves and the Boars.'

04 The Eagle and the Wolves

Chapter Nine

Some thirty miles to the west of Calleva, Vespasian gazed at the smoke billowing around the crest of a hill. The hillfort, scarcely two hundred paces across, was the smallest the Second Legion had razed so far. Yet the people who had built it had chosen the site welclass="underline" a steep hill tucked into the bend of a fast-flowing river. The exposed flanks of the hill had been heavily fortified with earthworks, thick palisades and an inventive range of anti-personnel obstacles, some of which had clearly been copied, albeit crudely, from Roman originals. Crude copies they may have been, but they had inflicted some crippling injuries on the more unwary of the legionaries who had assaulted the ramparts at noon.

A steady stream of casualties passed the legate on their way to the dressing station just inside the Second Legion's marching camp: men with mangled and bloody feet where the barbed points of caltrops had driven through the soles of their boots; others with deep penetration wounds from being pushed on to the points of abatis by their unwitting comrades behind. Then there were men injured by the missiles that had rained down from the warriors fiercely defending the hillfort's gateway, men struck by everything from spears and arrows, to stones, old cooking pots, animal bones and shards of pottery. Finally, those who had been wounded when the legionaries had at last got to grips with the enemy. These men bore the usual stab, slash and crush injuries delivered by spear, sword and club.

It had been only two days since the legion had pitched camp a short distance from the outer defensive ditch, and already there were over eighty casualties – the equivalent of one century. The full butcher's bill, Vespasian knew, would be waiting for him on the campaign desk in his tent. That was why he was reluctant to turn away from the spectacle of the burning hillfort. If the Durotrigans continued to bleed his forces away at this rate, then before long the legion would be too weak to continue campaigning independently of the main body of General Plautius' army. That would be a bitter blow for Vespasian, who had counted on this opportunity to make something of a name for himself before his tenure of the legion came to an end. If his political career was to advance when he returned to Rome, then he would need a good military record to trade on. His family was too recently promoted to the senatorial class for him to depend on any help from the old boy network of those with an established aristocratic lineage. It constantly infuriated Vespasian that men less able than he were given greater responsibilities far earlier in their careers. Not only was this not fair, he spurred himself on, it was so obviously inefficient and prone to disaster. For the good of Rome, and her divinely sanctioned destiny, the system had to change…

The hillfort was the seventh settlement his legion had seized and sacked. This had taken only two days to achieve, yet there were certain aspects of the operation that Vespasian was certain could be improved. A handful of the enemy had managed to slip through his picket lines the first night the legion had camped in front of the hillfort. That was quite deplorable, and the optio in charge of the sentries had been broken back to the ranks. Next time, the legate firmly resolved, he would erect a palisade across any likely rat runs.

Then there had been only a limited supply of ammunition for his artillery engines to lay down a demoralising and destructive barrage upon the defenders. Although they had managed to damage the defences around the main gate, and take down a number of the enemy warriors, the catapults and bolt-throwers had failed to make a large enough breach. When the First Cohort had been thrown into the assault they met a far more determined resistance than they had anticipated. Next time the legion would wait until its artillery was able to lay down the kind of barrage that breaks the enemy's will to resist, Vespasian decided.