‘What about the civvies?’ Stumps asked on my behalf. My stomach was like ice as I awaited the news. ‘Did they all leg it?’
‘Only some,’ Albus answered. ‘We’ll find out on the Rhine.’
‘I’m sure she made it,’ Stumps offered to me. ‘She’s not an idiot. She’ll have stuck with the troops.’
I believed that, but not all of the troops had survived. With the First and Second Centuries badly mauled, what chance was there for an unarmed civilian?
‘She’ll be fine,’ Titus added. ‘You don’t help her or yourself by worrying.’
But what else was there to do? And so, for those final miles, I thought of Linza. I thought of her body alongside Brando’s. I thought of the enemy emptying their pockets, and crows emptying their eye sockets. I thought of maggots wriggling in their flesh, and wolves gnawing their bones. So it was that, as the storm slipped into the distance and my sandals hit the wood of a pontoon bridge, I thought of nothing but death, and my failure prevent it.
‘I can’t believe we made it back to the Rhine.’ Stumps grinned, slapping my shoulder. ‘Cheer up, Felix, we made it!’
But Brando had not, and I was certain of the same fate for Linza. I opened my mouth to say as much, but as the brown waters of the Rhine swirled beneath us, my eyes fell upon someone who had survived the night, and who now stood smiling on the western bank of the river.
‘Welcome back, boys!’ H called to the men of what had once been his century, delighting in each face that he recognized.
As my own feet left the wooden boards and hit the soil that was the Roman Empire, H fell in alongside us. His smile slipped as he saw that Brando was absent from the ranks, but he fought to be positive. To make it a moment of victory, and not defeat.
‘It’s good to see you, boss.’ Titus meant it. His words were echoed by those around me.
‘I’m glad you’re alive,’ I added quickly. ‘Have you seen Linza?’
The man shook his head. ‘But most of the civvies made it, Felix, and she’s a young one with a brain. She’ll be fine. I mean it,’ he added, seeing my face sour and chin drop. ‘She’ll be fine.
‘You’ve got hot baths and hot food coming, boys,’ H said to the other men about me, and I followed his gesture to where the stone walls of the fort of Vetera loomed ahead, the powerful bastion overlooking lands that were now unquestionably under the power of the tribes and their leader Arminius. We had slipped from the German’s grasp, but the man I had once called a friend was victorious – all Roman presence east of the Rhine had been wiped away, and Arminius sat atop a powerful army that had tasted victory.
‘They won’t stop at Aliso,’ I said.
H shook his head. ‘They’ll have no choice, Felix. The commander of the lower Rhine has brought the First and the Fifth legions up here.’
I felt his confidence, but believed none of it. ‘Arminius killed three legions in the forest.’
‘In the forest, yes,’ H agreed, with a slow nod of his head. ‘And he defeated three legions, but he won’t beat five.’
‘Five?’ I asked, puzzled. There were only two on the Rhine. Varus had led the other three to ruin, and for a moment, I thought that fatigue had robbed H of his memory.
But I was wrong and, as we marched into Vetera, the centurion gave me my answer – it turned my guts to the same stone as the gatehouse above me.
‘The war in Pannonia’s finally put down!’ The Roman smiled. ‘The last of them have surrendered, Felix, so Tiberius is leading his legions to us!’
My step faltered. The Pannonian legions, coming here?
‘Are you all right, Felix?’ H asked, concerned because he was seeing a ghost, now – white-skinned, my breath held in unmoving lungs.
‘Which legions?’ I finally choked.
He told me with glee.
I heard only one.
The legion I had betrayed. The comrades I had abandoned.
The Eighth.
H beamed. ‘They’re coming here!’
My throat was lead, my stomach ice. The eagle I had once carried for Rome was now marching to the Rhine to bring vengeance against the turncoat Arminius, but my former legion would find another traitor in their path. A traitor they despised more than any other.
Corvus.
‘Felix, are you all right?’ H was worried. ‘What’s wrong with you?’
At first I said nothing, but then I laughed at the sky, bitter and angry.
‘You’re wrong,’ I told him. ‘You’re wrong, H!’
And so he was.
All the miles, all the fights, all the pain – I had thought it was carrying me away from a treasonous life. From a poisonous war that H thought was over. But the Eighth Legion now marched towards me and the treasured beginnings of a new life I had found amongst comrades.
They would not take it from me. I would not run again from what had started on bloody mountains a continent away – mountainsides where my friends had fought and died. Where Marcus had slipped away in my arms.
It would not be forgotten. Not one misdeed. Not one death. Blood would pay for blood.
‘You’re wrong,’ I said again.
Because the war in Pannonia was not over.
Corvus was alive, and I wanted vengeance.
Author’s Note
A quick note on the map – Pannonia and Dalmatia weren’t established as separate provinces until after the events in this book, but I’ve used them for simplicity’s sake throughout this series.
Following the destruction of three legions in the Teutoburg Forest, Arminius set about wiping out what was left of the Roman presence east of the river Rhine. In the classical texts of Velleius Paterculus and Cassius Dio, both men wrote that the revolting tribes were able to overrun the Roman forts on the Lippe one by one, often taking them by surprise. This run came to an end at the Fort of Aliso, which was under the command of Prefect Caedicius. Caedicius’s men supposedly inflicted a terrible toll on the enemy forces during the German’s assault, in large part thanks to the presence of archers on the walls.
The fort then held out for several weeks, and in this time a number of frustrated tribes began to leave the battlefield. Arminius decided that starving the garrison was now his best course, and to this end he left a force between Aliso and the Rhine to block the Romans’ way to safety, while he himself left the site to shore up support for his war against Rome.
Aliso’s commander Caedicius did not expect that a rescue would come from across the Rhine, or that the garrison would survive winter, and so the prefect planned to break out of the siege. Following reconnaissance by his scouts – who made note of the German dispositions and routines – the Romans waited for their chance to slip away. This eventually came under the cover of a heavy storm. According to Dio, the fort’s occupants succeeded in making it past the enemy’s first and second outposts before they were discovered by the tribesmen. As I have written it, this detection was supposedly caused by the panicked shouting of civilians as they failed to keep up with the vanguard. Dio says that, surrounded and attacked on all sides, Prefect Caedicius ordered that the civilians should abandon their possessions. When they did so, the Germans became distracted enough by this loot that the Roman force was able to cut its way clear. Dio goes on to say that the garrison in the fort of Vetera – modern day Xanten – learned of what was happening to the east, and sent units across the Rhine to see Aliso’s refugees safely home.
Personally, I believe that there must have been some early co-ordination in this. The flight from Aliso took place at night and under heavy storm, and so I have to think that the soldiers on the Rhine would have been at least warned of such a breakout attempt, and stood ready to support it. Given the conditions, and that it took place on the opposite side of the Rhine by some miles, it’s hard to think that the garrison at Vetera only became aware of the breakout by chance.