Blood and Steel Read online

  A flamboyant gesture by the orator brought Gordian out of his memories. Slowly, for imperial majesty precluded sudden movements, and out of the corners of his eyes, he studied those who stood behind the thrones. Brennus, his father’s silent bodyguard, as ever was at hand. The persistent rumour that Brennus was an illegitimate child of Gordian the Elder was fuelled by the striking resemblance between his legitimate son and the bodyguard, although the old man laughed the story off.

  Gordian took in the rest of the party. Arrian and Sabinianus, the two legates, stood together, as close as the Cercopes, the mischievous twins of myth. Despite the solemnity of the occasion, some hint of patrician amusement could be detected in their faces. Serenus Sammonicus, his old tutor, was the same age as his father, but appeared older and very far from well. Aemilius Severinus, the commander of the speculatores, was not young. He must be in his sixties. But he looked tough and fit. Phillyrio, as his scouts called Severinus for some long-forgotten reason, had been scoured and tanned like leather by a lifetime patrolling the desert frontier. At the end was Mauricius, the local landowner whose persecution had been the catalyst. Few enough to support a revolution, none of them, apart from the legates, of any great rank, but loyalty ever counted for more than mere numbers.

  ‘On his father’s side he traces his descent from the house of the Gracchi, on his mother’s from the Emperor Trajan.’ The oration had moved to the origins of Gordian Senior, another safe topic for fulsome exploration. ‘His own father, his grandfather, and his great-grandfather, his wife’s father and grandfather, and likewise another of his wife’s grand-fathers and two of her great-great-grandfathers, were Consuls.’

  The offices, deeds and virtues of every one of these individuals would be recalled, exaggerated, or invented. Gordian seemed to have been listening forever, to have been Emperor for eternity.

  Gordian had been busy beyond measure. That first day, before the citizens of Thysdrus could swear their oaths of allegiance, majestic regalia had had to be created. It had been easy enough to find both a small, portable altar for the sacred fire and rods to bind around axes to make the fasces. As governor his father had curule chairs which could serve as imperial thrones. A purple cloak already had been taken from the sanctuary of Caelestis, from the shoulders of the goddess, and draped around his father. Another, most likely of similar provenance, was produced for himself. An imperial seal had been more problematic. But the town gaol had contained a forger – as long as there were coins, there would be counterfeiters – and, once pardoned and reunited with the tools of his illicit trade, it had taken him no time to create a simulacrum; in metal not precious stone, but the impression it made had seemed adequate.

  From the ceremonial Gordian had turned to the practical. After his father had retired to his chamber, he had worked through the night. Many, many letters had been dictated and signed; to all the leading communities in the Province of Africa, to the commanders of the eight small military units stationed there. More thought had been devoted to those destined for the more than forty governors of other provinces across the imperium. Yet the most care of all had gone into the sentiments and wording of those that were to go to the capital, both those that bore Gordian’s signature and those that carried a false subscript. Menophilus and Valerian, accompanied by his equestrian kinsman Maecius, had left for Rome at dawn.

  The imperial party had remained at Thysdrus for just two more days. Long enough to find recruits to bring the horse guards up to two hundred swords. Renamed the Equites Singulares Augusti, Mauricius had been given their command. A makeshift Praetorian Guard, five hundred strong, had been formed out of the local youth association. The Iuvenes might not be seasoned soldiers, but they had a modicum of military training, and neither their appearance nor enthusiasm could be faulted.

  The new Emperors, with escort and entourage, had gone to Hadrumetum, then up the coast road to Horrea Caelia and Pupput, before turning north-west to Ad Aquas, to skirt the gulf of Utica, and so to Carthage. Six days hard travelling, Gordian in the saddle, his father going in a fast carriage before mounting a horse for the entry into the city. The speed of their journey meant that only those communities through which they had passed had yet acknowledged them. But professions of fealty had come from Fuscinus, Prefect of the 15th Cohort of Emesenes based at Ammaedara, and similar messages had been waiting for them at Ad Aquas from the commanders of the Urban Cohort and the detachment of the 3rd Legion Augusta stationed in Carthage. So far things could not have gone better. Gordian was proud of what he had accomplished. Like Mark Antony, he could rouse himself from his pleasures when necessity demanded.

  ‘As Horatius held the bridge, Gordian stood alone amidst the slaughter and held the gate at Ad Palmam. Never tiring, his man-killing hands struck down the foe, threw back the barbarian horde.’

  Gordian had been half aware of the flow of the oration: the excellent omens – in fact they had been appalling, for those who believed in such things – the long distant martial exploits of his father. But now it had reached his own triumphs, he was all ears.

  ‘As Alexander scaled the Sogdian Rock, so our young Emperor climbed the sheer cliff at Esuba. Many was the companion he caught as they slipped, saved from a certain death. When he attained the summit, the brigands discovered neither their remoteness nor their inaccessibility provided any defence against the old-fashioned Roman courage of our Augustus.’

  All too soon a new theme was introduced. ‘Justice is a portion of his humanity: for when victorious, the Emperor did not repay the aggressors in kind, but divided his actions in just proportion between punishment and humanity.’

  Gordian stopped listening. Not a dog had been left alive in the lair of the bandit Canartha. His thoughts scouted ahead. They would not stay long in Carthage. Leaving Sabinianus as the new governor of Africa, as soon as word came from Menophilus, they would sail for Rome. There they would muster the military forces in the city: the Urban Cohorts, the men of the Watch, those Praetorians and the soldiers of the 2nd Legion who were not away in the North, the detachments of sailors, and however many frumentarii were in their camp on the Caelian. They should raise new troops, perhaps recruit some from the gladiatorial schools. Once they had secured the allegiance of the two great fleets at Misenum and Ravenna, they could hold Italy, and wait for the governors across the empire to declare themselves.

  ‘Just as the sons of Asclepius rescue the sick, just as fugitives obtain security in the inviolate precincts of divine power …’

  Agitated, despite himself, Gordian could find no meaning in the words. Had the gods existed, Gordian would have prayed for news. Events were beyond his control. Everything now depended on what was happening elsewhere; in Rome, in governors’ palaces across the empire, and with the army in the distant North. At least three governors were closely bound to the house of the Gordians. Claudius Julianus of Dalmatia, Fidus of Thrace, and Egnatius Lollianus of Bithynia-Pontus had no legions, but their example might sway the undecided. And in Rome the plebs urbana would be well disposed. Some time ago, his father had distributed a hundred Sicilian and a hundred Cappadocian racehorses among the Circus factions. And he had endeared himself across Italy by giving four days of stage-plays and Juvenalia in the cities of Campania, Etruria, Umbria, Flaminia, and Picenum, all at his own expense.

  ‘Because of our Emperors, marriages are chaste, fathers have legitimate offspring, spectacles, festivals, and competitions are conducted with proper splendour and due modera-tion. People choose a style of life like that which they observe in the Emperors. Piety to the gods is increased, the earth is tilled in peace, the sea sailed without danger.’

  There was no mistaking the tardy arrival of the epilogue. Gordian shifted his numb buttocks. Not long now. Just the already intimated new honorifics, and the interminable speech would be finished. Gordian was dust-stained, tired and hot; the baths would be welcome.

  ‘We fear neither barbarians nor enemies. The Emperors’ arms are a safer fortress than our city walls
. What greater blessing must one ask from the gods than the safety of the Emperors? Only that they incline our rulers to accept …’

  Gordian hoped Parthenope and Chione were not too fatigued from the journey. He had earned the special relaxa-tion from the cares of office that his mistresses could provide.

  ‘Although too modest to share with his father the titles of Pontifex Maximus or Father of the Country, however, let the son also take the name Africanus to commemorate the country of his accession, and that of Romanus to celebrate the city of his birth and make evident the contrast from the barbarous tyrant of hated memory. All hail Imperator Caesar Marcus Antonius Gordianus Sempronianus Romanus Africanus Pius Felix Augustus, father and son.’

  As his father stood to accept on both their behalf the not-unexpected titles, Gordian sensed a disturbance behind him in the imperial box. Suillius, the tribune in charge of the detachment from the 3rd Augusta, leant over his shoulder, and spoke in his ear.

  ‘Augustus, the legionaries will not leave their barracks. They are tearing down your new portraits from the standards. Only your presence can stop the mutiny.’

  Chapter 4

  The Far North

  The Sarmatian Steppe, Territory of the Iazyges,

  The Day before the Nones of March, AD238

  The plain was white and flat and without end. To the east a thin stand of trees, in every other direction the plain stretched untrammelled as far as could be seen. The trees, willow and lime, marked a shallow, marshy stream, now iced over and treacherous. Beyond their bare, frozen and delicate-looking branches the Steppe continued its remorseless slide to infinity.

  Enemy in sight!

  A rider – his horse labouring through the snow – was coming up from the south. He held the corner of his cloak in one hand above his head in the customary signal: Enemy in sight!

  Like everyone else in the army with a point of vantage, Maximinus gazed past the lone horseman. The snow was flecked with black where the taller grasses and the occasional shrub showed through. In the extreme distance, it merged with the dirty pale grey of the sky. There was nothing else in sight. The scout had outrun the enemy.

  Maximinus dropped his reins and blew on his hands. His breath plumed. It was very cold. A movement to his left drew his eyes to the stream. Where reed beds or the trunks of trees provided shelter from the north wind there was no snow. The ice was black, shining. A flight of ducks clattered up, wheeled, and flew away.

  ‘There,’ Javolenus said.

  Maximinus looked south once more, to where his bodyguard pointed. A thin smudge of black on the horizon. The Iayzges were a long way off. It would take them an hour or more to reach the stationary Roman forces. They had no reason to hurry.

  His fingers were numb. Maximinus flexed them, rubbed his hands together, before taking up his reins. It was time to inspect the troops again. Indicating that his staff should follow, he turned his hack, dug his heels in its flanks, and set off at a slow canter to the right of the infantry front line. Even though the snow had been trampled, the going was both heavy and uncertain.

  When he was first promoted to high command, a fellow officer had asked why he still worked so hard, now he had attained a rank where a certain leisure was permissible. The greater I become, the harder I shall labour, he had replied. Back then – the reign of the glorious Caracalla – he had joined his men at their wrestling. He had thrown them to the ground, one after another, six or seven at a sweat. Once a tribune of another legion, an insolent young man from a Senatorial house, but big and strong, had mocked him, claiming his soldiers had to let him win. Challenged to a match, Maximinus had knocked him senseless with one blow to the chest, a blow delivered with an open palm. Back then, even Senators had called him Hercules. Now they whispered he was a new Spartacus, or another Antaeus or Sciron. The only imperial secretary he trusted – despite Apsines of Gadara being a Syrian – had told him the stories about the last two.

  As he pulled up by the standards of the 2nd Legion, the Parthian, its commander stepped forward from the other officers and saluted. Clean, well-cared-for armour showed under the Prefect’s fur-lined cloak.

  ‘Are your men ready?’ Maximinus asked.

  ‘We will do what is ordered, and at every command we will be ready.’

  From an equestrian family with a long record of military service, Julius Capitolinus was a fine officer. In Germania, at the battle in the marsh and the one at the pass, he had led his men well, fought like a lion. Maximinus knew he should smile, say something affable. Nothing came to mind. His spies told him Capitolinus passed his time off duty writing biographies. That hardly seemed suitable. Maximinus nodded, knowing he was scowling. His adorable half-barbarian scowl, Paulina had called it. Most likely Capitolinus judged it differently.

  With his thighs Maximinus guided his mount a few paces away from the officers. He regarded the legionaries. Where their helmets, scarves and beards revealed anything of their faces, they were pinched with the cold. The front ranks stood to attention, those further back quietly stamped their feet and beat their arms against their sides.

  ‘A long way from the Alban Hills.’ Maximinus pitched his voice to carry.

  Those who could hear grinned. A murmur ran through the formation, like a wave retreating over a shingle beach, as the Emperor’s words were repeated from man to man all the way to both flanks and the rear.

  ‘These barbarians’ – he waved towards the south – ‘stand between us and warmth, between us and hot food, mulled wine, the baths, women and all the other pleasures of the camp. Defeat them today, and we will have broken the Iazyges, as we broke their cousins the Roxolani in the autumn. Defeat them, and the Danube frontier is safe from the Alps to the Black Sea. Defeat them, and we can cross the river, back into the empire, never to return to this empty wilderness.’

  There was a muted noise of approval. Those in the rear had stopped moving, were straining to hear.

  ‘Duty is hard. Those of us raised in the army know that truth. I am no Sophist, no clever speaker from the Forum. I will not lie to you, pretend things are other than they are. This summer we must make one final campaign into Germania. When they too have submitted, when the Rhine also is safe, then, at last, after these long and weary four years, I can lead you home to Italy, to your camp on the Alban Hills, where your wives and children wait for you. Duty is hard, but the end of our labours is in sight.’

  Again, the shouts betrayed less than complete enthusiasm.

  ‘Today, remember my orders, keep quiet in the ranks, listen to your officers. Remember you are Romans, they are barbarians. You have discipline, they do not. Give me victory, and I will reward you well. A year’s pay to every man who fights. A year’s pay to the dependents of any who fall.’

  This time even the reminder of their own mortality did not dampen their spirits. As one, the men cheered.

  Enrich the soldiers, ignore everyone else, Septimius Severus had said. There was much sense in the words of Maximinus’ old commander.

  ‘The 2nd Legion, the Parthian, Eternally Loyal, Faithful and Fortunate. You hold the right of the line, the position of honour. These barbarians’ – this time his gesture was one of contempt – ‘in their ignorance and blind stupidity, believe they have us at a disadvantage. But we know that the gods are delivering them to us. Kill them! Kill them all! Do not spare yourselves!’

  Full-throated, the roar went up. Wheeling his horse, Maximinus rode towards the next body of men. The dark stain on the horizon had widened, filled out. He could not delay, but there was time for a few words to each formation in the infantry front line.

  From the Ides of January, for a month he had quartered the Steppe, from the Danube to the foothills of the Carpathians. There had been several sharp engagements as he pursued and caught three tribal herds. Then, one night, when the army was far out, the main barbarian force had struck. The Iazyges had taken back their herds, had driven off much of the Roman baggage train. For another month the army had marched sou
th, harassed, short of food. At first a thaw had set in, and they had waded through mud. Then a cold north wind had begun to blow again, bringing blizzards. The temperature dropped, as if the gods had reversed the seasons and midwinter had returned. In the mornings some sentries were found dead from the cold, others disembowelled. Finally, just two days’ march north of the Danube, the entire horde of the Iazyges were waiting, drawn up across their path, many thousand horsemen arrayed for battle.

  Maximinus had ordered a camp entrenched. The following morning the Iazyges again spread out across the Steppe ready to fight. Although the soldiers had thronged around him demanding he lead them against the barbarians, and the army had trembled on the edge of mutiny, Maximinus had not been swayed. For six days, as the fresh snow fell, the Iazyges paraded across the plain, and the legionaries and auxiliaries near rioted, he ignored all entreaties and threats, and held the army back behind its ditch and rampart. Food, forage and fuel were almost exhausted. Maximinus had the imperial supplies given to the troops, and had commanded all officers to likewise surrender their personal provisions. Apsines had made some flattering comparison to Alexander the Great, but most officers, unaccustomed to privation of any sort, let alone hunger, had not taken it well.

  On the evening of the sixth day, when the Iazyges had departed to their distant encampment, Maximinus had distributed his orders, quietly without trumpets or commotion. That night, leaving torches burning along the fortifications, he had led the army out. In the strange glare of the snow, with no lights showing, they went east until they came across this unnamed watercourse, then followed it south. In the gloaming of the false dawn, he had selected his position, and drawn up his men.

  The 2nd Legion formed the extreme right of twenty-four thousand heavy infantry stretching back to the frozen stream on the east. Eight thousand were Praetorians and one thousand, at the opposite end, among the trees, German tribesmen. The rest were legionaries, drawn from across the northern frontiers. Flavius Vopiscus had them all waiting in separate blocks, sixteen ranks deep, with carefully measured intervals between, like pieces on the board of a game of latrunculi. Close behind them clustered some two-and-a-half thousand archers, easterners from Emesa, Osrhoene and Armenia, under Iotapianus. Scattered among these shivering Orientals were fifty small carts, their loads still covered with tarpaulins.