At the rear of the column came the camp followers, several hundred merchants, traders, pimps, whores, entertainers, slave dealers and the long-suffering unofficial families of the soldiers. By law any man of the rank of centurion or below was not allowed to enter into a marriage. Nevertheless soldiers are creatures of flesh and blood and some had formed attachments with the women who lived outside the fortresses of the empire, and had children by them. These poor creatures, Cato reflected, were destined to trudge along in the wake of the army, wholly reliant on the meagre pay of the soldier to whom they were attached. If he fell in battle they might be left a small sum in the soldier’s will, provided that he had written one. Otherwise they would be without support, until the mother could find another man. Around these small family groups trundled the carts of the commercial camp followers, piled high with the trinkets, drink and little luxuries that soldiers craved when they were off duty.
In the distance, behind the tail end of the camp followers, marched the auxiliary cohort of the rearguard. At the start of the march the ground had still been wet and the men of the Segovian Cohort had had to negotiate the churned ground left by the passage of thousands of boots, hoofs and wheels ahead of them. But the sun had now dried the ground and had yet to reach the almost as annoying point where the ground was so dry that the passage of a large army disturbed a cloud of dust that clung to every surface and filled mouths and eyes with a fine grit.
Macro and Cato were marching a short distance to one side of the baggage train, their men strung out in an extended screen on either side of the line of march. Having decided he could do with a break from the saddle, Cato had handed his mount to Thraxis and was walking the remainder of the way to Viroconium. So reduced were the escort’s numbers that even a small raiding party could have caused mayhem and fled with their spoils long before Cato could have gathered a sufficient number of men to repel them. But there was no sign of any enemy on the march back to Viroconium.
From time to time they had passed a small village or settlement whose remaining inhabitants had run to hide as the army passed by. A few times Cato had seen distant figures on the tops of hills watching them. Never more than a handful. Hunting parties more than likely; rather than war bands. They had never ventured any closer and fled the moment any Roman horseman turned in their direction. The defeat of Caratatacus’s army seemed to have broken the will to fight of the Silurian and Ordovician nations. But Cato knew that if Caratacus raised his standard again there would still be many who would rally to him, as they had in the past after previous defeats.
‘I shan’t be sorry to trade a tent and sleeping roll for a nice dry barracks and a proper bed,’ said Macro, straining his eyes to scan the landscape ahead for the first sign of Viroconium.
‘I wouldn’t say no to that,’ Cato agreed absently. He was preoccupied with the disappearance of Caratacus and the need to discover the identity of the agent Pallas had sent to kill them. The only advantage they had at the moment was that the agent was unaware that he was being hunted by Septimus. That was the only reason that he had been permitted to live when they took his cart, Cato reasoned. If Pallas’s man had known Septimus for what he was, he would have been discovered with a knife in his back instead of a knock on the head. With luck, they would find and eliminate the enemy agent before he had a chance to do any more mischief.
‘And there’s the prospect of reinforcements,’ Macro tried to get the conversation going again. ‘Be good to flesh out our ranks. There’s hardly any of us left. Let’s hope the general’s sent for some fresh draughts from the Second.’
At the mention of their old legion Cato recalled that the elite unit that Vespasian had once commanded was now stationed down at Isca Dumnoniorum. Apart from keeping a watchful eye on the local tribes, the legion was mainly a training establishment these days. It took in the convoys of recruits shipped over from Gaul and completed their basic training on British soil before sending them on to the other units of the army in Britannia. Cato decided that he would leave their induction into the Blood Crows to a veteran cavalryman like Miro. Yes, let Decurion Miro handle it, he decided. He had more important matters to deal with.
Conscious that he had not immediately replied to his friend, Cato quickly replayed their last exchange in his mind and cleared his throat. ‘I wouldn’t get your hopes up, Macro. The baggage train escort, and its commanding officers, are still very much in the general’s black book. If there are any reinforcements available I rather fear that you and I are going to be at the back of a very long queue.’
‘My, you are full of the joys of life, aren’t you?’
‘Can you blame me? Ostorius has pinned the blame for Caratacus’s escape on us and you can be sure he’ll make that known back in Rome. If his version of events is accepted, I’d be surprised if we were entrusted with any command larger than a latrine block in future.’
‘Back in the shit again, eh?’ Macro quipped.
Cato could not help a chuckle and Macro slapped him lightly on the back. ‘There you go, lad! The boy can be taught to smile.’
‘Seriously though, Macro, I don’t see much to smile about at the moment. Our return to soldiering has hardly been a glorious success.’
‘Oh, we haven’t done so badly. We held Bruccium against Caratacus’s army and we did for him back on the hill. No one can take that away from us. The lads here on the ground know what we did.’
Cato sighed. ‘I suppose so. But that won’t count for much back in Rome. We’re in the lap of the gods now, Macro. And the gods tend to have an odd sense of humour at the best of times.’
‘Then you’d get on well with them. Time for a sacrifice to Fortuna, I’d say. Look here, Cato. There’s nothing we can do about the situation at the moment, right?’
‘True.’
‘Then what’s the point in spending all your time fretting about it? Tell you what. Tonight, once we’re back in barracks, let’s go into the vicus and get totally rat-arsed. The drinks are on me.’
Cato thought a moment and nodded. ‘All right then. Rat-arsed it is.’
Two days later Cato and Macro were standing in front of the review platform outside Viroconium. The fortress had been extended to accommodate a second legion and a series of smaller forts had been constructed for the auxiliary units attached to the army for the campaigns against the mountain tribes. In front of the two officers lay the training ground, a vast rectangle cleared by the army’s engineers when the fortress was first built two years earlier. The men of the escort detachment, their ranks bolstered by replacements, stood formed up facing their commanders.
With Caratacus still at large, the general had not yet issued orders for his forces to disperse and the vexillation from the Ninth Legion had added to the crowded barracks in the fortress. Despite the casualties from the recent battle, the arrival of a column of replacements had meant that some of the legionary cohorts had been assigned to the smaller forts. For that reason, and the faint possibility that the army might have to march to war again, the baggage train escort was retained and the legionaries and Thracians shared a fort on the far side of the training ground from the main fortress.
That suited Cato, who was keen to distance himself from General Ostorius. The arrangement also suited the men, who had plenty of space within the fort due to their losses. However, the luxury of space was short-lived when the two units received new recruits to bolster their depleted ranks. Just over two hundred men for Macro and a hundred and fifty Batavians for Cato, together with two hundred remounts. Not enough to bring them up to full strength but welcome nonetheless. As was the custom, the senior centurions of the First Cohorts of each legion had first pick of the replacements, then by order of declining seniority the commanders of the remaining cohorts took their pick. Macro was none too pleased by the men that had been left when his time came.