Scaurus raised an eyebrow.
‘You’ll make peace with him, after what he’s done here, Legatus?’
Albinus smiled beneficently back at him.
‘Oh yes, I have explicit orders from the provincial governor, and more than likely from the emperor above him. It’s not in Rome’s interests to slaughter these people, Tribune, because if we do we’ll just end up with the next generation of the little bastards champing at the bit to come and get their revenge. Whereas if we make peace and then police it strongly enough they’ll just have to get on with their lives, a good part of which will consist of buying as many of our luxuries as they can afford. They’ll pay with gold, and horses, and whatever crop they can spare, and I need hardly remind you that the empire stands in dire need of all three of those commodities. On top of which, they’ll make an effective buffer against barbarians from further north, whereas if we liquidate them we’ll have to start afresh with whoever moves in to claim their tribal lands. And Mithras knows that every bloody barbarian starts out thinking he can push his way into Rome if he kicks at the door with enough force. The governor believes it’s better to deal with people who’ve already learned their lesson the hard way, at the hands of men like you and I, and who’s to say he’s wrong? So yes, we’ll negotiate a peace treaty with Purta and send him on his way, with the appropriate hostages taken, of course.’
‘And the gold that my idiot colleague Belletor saw fit to bestow upon Balodi? It’s fairly clear that he cemented his usurped position as king by making an offering of the coin to Purta in return for his backing.’
Albinus shook his head, making the warding sign at the mention of the dead tribune’s name.
‘Domitius Belletor doesn’t seem to have been much of a judge of men, does he? May the gods preserve us both from a misjudgement of that order. If what you say is true, then Purta can buy his release from the trap we have him in with gold as well as the lives of his children. A day or two watching our soldiers fortify the hills around his camp ought to provide him with a decent enough incentive.’
The two legati met Purta on the far side of a newly constructed bridge over the fort’s western ditch, inside the hollow square of the Thirteenth Legion’s five thousand men, whose first spear oversaw proceedings with a sharp eye and a sharper tongue. The auxiliary cohorts that had defended the fort lined the ditch that had seen so much bloodshed, their shields four ranks deep behind the earth wall in a deliberately impressive show of strength. The legion’s centurions served as the senior officers’ honour guard, a circle of sixty hard, forbidding faces into which Purta and his fellow nobles walked with their swords held out in both hands, as instructed. Clodius Albinus waited in silence as the king and his men presented their weapons to the legion’s first spear, who subjected them to a careful inspection in order to confirm that they were of sufficient quality to count as the first peace offerings. With the enemy leaders disarmed, Albinus stepped forward to face the defeated Sarmatae ruler. He looked the king up and down with a grim stare before speaking.
‘This is not a negotiation, King Purta, and the terms I am about to impose upon you are not a proposal. To put it bluntly, you have gambled and lost. You chose to chance your arm against the army of the greatest empire the world has ever seen, and you have failed. You can either have peace, on our terms, or you can return to your people and tell them to arm themselves for a short and brutal fight. Our archers and bolt throwers will rain sharp iron into you from all sides, and when we judge the time is right we will send our legionaries forward to grind out any last vestiges of resistance. Then, when we’ve inevitably won that fight, given we have your exits barred and men on the high ground to all sides, your people will be enslaved. Not just these men here, but your entire nation. I am ordered by the emperor either to make peace, here, now and on Rome’s terms, or to empty your lands of every man, woman and child in order to enable the settlement of more amenable neighbours. If you make it necessary I will simply erase your tribe from history and repopulate your land.’
He raised a piece of paper.
‘The terms the emperor offers you are these. Firstly, you will return the gold which was recently paid to your servant Balodi as a sign of good faith. Any of the gold which has been dispersed will be replaced from your own treasury. Any shortfall thereafter will be recompensed to the empire in the form of slaves, each of whom will be reckoned in at half the market rate to account for the likely oversupply and consequent fall in their sale price.
‘Secondly, you will provide Rome with a further five thousand horsemen for service on the empire’s borders. Thirdly, you will present your own children and those of your nobles to act as hostages. They will be raised in Rome, trained to be model Roman citizens, and their safety will be the reward you will earn for your compliance with the terms of this treaty. We will return them when they are ready to rule in your places, at which point you will abdicate in their favour. Fourthly, you will submit to frequent and robust policing of these terms by our legions, which will be free to march across your lands without hindrance. Any gathering of more than one hundred men will be conducted under the control of Roman officers, and any such gathering which is unsupervised will be considered as an act of war. And lastly, you will free every Roman citizen currently enslaved by your people immediately. And let me warn you, Purta, that if in the course of policing this treaty our officers discover any evidence of continued enslavement of even a single Roman citizen, they will be authorised to burn the settlement in question to the ground, and to enslave every man, woman and child they can lay their hands on.’
He looked the Sarmatae king up and down with a look of disdain.
‘You have no choice in the matter of these demands other than whether to submit to them peacefully or at the point of a spear with your own shipment to Rome for public execution a consequent inevitability. Decide now.’
Purta bowed his head briefly in submission.
‘I will comply with these terms.’
Albinus nodded tersely, passing the paper to his clerk.
‘Wise, Purta, given that you have no real choice. Be very clear though, that this peace will be policed by men like these.’ Albinus waved an arm at the centurions arrayed about them. ‘Rome will have peace on its own terms, with routine patrols across your lands to ensure that no further stupidity of the sort we’ve seen here is allowed to take root. You will be king, but your position will be underwritten and controlled by Roman arms, and you will be subject to very close scrutiny.’
Purta nodded again, his face set in impassive lines. Albinus gestured to the surviving nobles from Balodi’s tribe, huddled under the Tungrians’ spears on the far side of the bridge.
‘These men, however, do not come under the terms of this agreement. Their former king made a formal agreement to remove them from the war and to return to his homeland, a pledge that was agreed by all of his nobles but then repudiated by his father’s brother when he murdered Galatas. The king’s murderer was then foolish enough to bring them to your side in defiance of this agreement, and he has therefore doomed them all to slavery, without exception. They will carry out whatever labour Rome sees fit for them for the rest of their lives, and will content themselves that the alternative was a slow and bloody execution. I intend to sell them into the service of Rome’s mines in the valley of the Ravenstone. They can spend the rest of their miserable lives tearing gold from the mountains in the service of the empire, and providing her with the treasure she needs to remain strong in the face of threats like these. They will all march south to the mine under guard, with one exception, and none of them will ever be freed to return to their homes. This is the price that must be paid by every man who reneges on an agreement with Rome. One man, however, has committed crimes too great for me to ignore, or to punish with simple servitude. Bring him forward!’