‘That’s quite a year you had. It seems Britannia is every bit as troubled as the German and Dacian frontiers. I’d wondered why there wasn’t more reinforcement for Dacia from the fortresses along the Rhenus.’
Scaurus reached for his cup.
‘With the Sixth Legion losing half its strength in one ugly afternoon, there wasn’t really any choice for the empire but to reinforce Britannia from Germania. It was either that or pull back to the south of the country to regroup. We would have lost the northern half of the island for years, perhaps for good, and even if it is a desolate land, good for nothing but breeding slaves and hunting dogs, it would still have been a defeat.’ He smiled at the men around him. ‘And everyone knows what happens to governors who deliver defeats to the throne.’ He took another sip as the officers nodded knowingly. ‘Mind you, even with all that extra manpower it was still hard to tell just who was more likely to end up holding the loser’s severed head for a while. .’
He gestured for Arminius to refill their cups.
‘But what of you, Prefect? How does the son of a tribal king end up in the service of Rome?’
Gerwulf leant back, smiling gently, while Arminius refilled his cup with an expression of poorly concealed interest.
‘As you may know, Tribune, the story of my people is a strange one. The Quadi tribe is a friend of Rome, and yet we have taken part in some of the bloodiest wars against the empire that the northern frontier has ever seen. And on more than one occasion, men who have been sent to serve as soldiers of Rome have found themselves facing their own people across the battlefield, although not, thank Thunaraz, myself. Not yet, at least.’
He paused for a sip of heavily watered wine.
‘I was taken hostage by Rome more than fifteen years ago, as a boy of thirteen years. My tribe took part in the invasion of Germania Superior that the scholars now tell us was the start of what they’ve taken to calling the German Wars. You have to remember that this was in the days before the plague from the east ravaged the German legions along with the rest of the empire, which meant that the forces to hand were still strong enough to defeat us with ease. I was given over as one of the royal hostages who were taken in return for the legions not simply liquidating the tribe as revenge for our incursion onto imperial territory. Of course, in reality we were only facing part of the First Auxiliary Legion and a heavy cavalry wing, but we weren’t to know that, and so my father made peace rather than risk his people’s complete destruction. I was shipped off to Rome where a rather more enlightened gentleman than most of his peers decided to take me in hand and turn me into the son he never had. By the time the war had turned hot again five years later, I was too civilised to be considered an enemy of the empire, and in any case I was on the brink of joining the army as a junior tribune due to my new “father’s” influence.’
He drank again, holding the cup up for Arminius to refill.
‘Thank you. So off I went to war, and by the Gods I loved it! I started off as a glorified message runner, but once I’d proved myself with the sword I was soon commanding my own cohort. My first proper fight was the disaster at Aquileia, when we marched under the command of the praetorian prefect Titus Furius Victorinus to rescue the city from a barbarian siege, and gentlemen what a fuck up that was! We fought our way out of the battle with half the strength we’d had the day before, and left a carpet of dead and wounded soldiers for the tribesmen to make sport of as we pulled back, still under sporadic attack even as night fell. The official histories say that Furius Victorinus died from the plague, but I saw him go down fighting. They hoisted his head on a spear to terrify the shit out of the rest of us, which worked well enough, I can tell you.’
He sipped at his wine again.
‘We spent the rest of that year on the back foot, just fighting to stop them from penetrating any further south and trying to avoid another pitched battle, because believe me, we were in no fit state. Of course, the two emperors managed to reinforce us in the end, and eventually we went back on the offensive and pushed the tribes back across the Danubius, but it’s true when the old sweats tell you that a man can learn more about soldiering from a single defeat than from a summer of victories. We were hardened by that year, my men and I, and after that we neither gave any quarter nor expected it when we faced barbarians. We fought almost a dozen times in five years, marching up and down the frontier to get to each tribal incursion in turn, and by the time the war had ground to a halt it was clear to everyone around me that I was ready to command more than a single cohort.’
‘The problem was,’ — he drank again, smacking his lips in appreciation — ‘the problem was that in the eyes of the army I was still a barbarian. A useful barbarian, mind you, handy for turning raw soldiers into veterans and enemy warriors into carrion, but not one of “us”.’ He raised an eyebrow at Scaurus, who nodded back with a knowing expression. ‘No, I was never going to get my own legion, or even command of a legion detachment if there was someone with darker skin and the right shaped nose to hand, and for a while it looked as if I’d be a junior tribune for the rest of my time with the army, until a detachment of men from my own tribe arrived at the fortress where my legion was in winter quarters. I was the obvious choice to command them, despite the fact that they already had a prefect of sorts. One of my cousins had volunteered to lead them when the Romans had demanded the service of two thousand men as the price for their latest defeat. He made the mistake of taking me for a Roman — I suppose I’d been changed out of any recognition by my experiences — and he compounded the error by insulting me in front of the cohort when it became clear to him that I was taking his place. To have backed down would have been to justify his insolence, so I took him on in single combat, there and then, revealing my true identity as I lifted my sword ready for the death stroke. I half expected the legatus in charge to stop it at that point, but he seemed to find the whole thing hilarious, and allowed it to play out to the end. The men of the cohort were a little suspicious, of course, but we soon got over that, and here we are, still fighting whichever of Rome’s enemies we’re pointed at. We were ordered out here when we marched into Apulum two days ago, and it’s obviously just as well that we were sent here rather than just being kicked up the road to the north to join the Thirteenth Legion.’
He took another draught of wine, and then looked around the tent with a questioning expression.
‘So that’s my story, how about you men? Tribune?’
Scaurus tipped his head in salute.
‘For my part, I consider myself fortunate to have reached my current rank. Like you, I am a man who was always most unlikely ever to command anything bigger than a single cohort. Whereas you suffer from your barbarian origin, I was born into the right family, only a hundred years too late. My ancestor made the mistake of siding with Vitellius during the year of the Four Emperors, and while we were fortunate that Vespasian decided to be magnanimous in victory to the extent that he avoided execution, our family was reduced to relative obscurity in one dismal afternoon.’ He raised his hand and gestured to Marcus. ‘And the centurion here goes by the name of Corvus, a young man from Rome whose letter of introduction got him a place in the cohort just as the rebellion in Britannia started.’
Gerwulf snorted his amusement, raising his cup in salute.
‘That must have been a nasty surprise for a lad fresh from the capital. You’ve seen some action since then?’