The Centurions Read online

  The Centurions

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  The Roman Emperors

  Prologue

  I The Gods of New Ventures

  II The City in Festival

  III Spring Leave-taking

  IV Centurion

  V The Agri Decumates

  VI Red Wolf, Black Wolf

  VII The Boar

  VIII The Mirrors of Memory

  IX The Peace of the Wine Jars

  X The Horse Mask

  XI A Springtime War

  XII A Traffic in Souls

  XIII The Road Home

  XIV Harvestnight

  XV The Lyxian Horse

  XVI The Arena

  XVII The Outcast

  XVIII Home Leave

  XIX A Face by Torchlight

  XX Spies and Allies

  XXI The Battle on the Hill

  XXII End and Beginning

  Cast of Characters

  Glossary

  Author’s Note

  The Centurions Series

  Copyright

  The Centurions

  Damion Hunter

  For Mouse and D.B.

  The Roman Emperors

  AUGUSTUS 27 B.C.–14 A.D.

  TIBERIUS 14-37 A.D.

  CALIGULA 37-41 A.D.

  CLAUDIUS 41-54 A.D.

  NERO 54-68 A.D.

  GALBA, OTHO, VITELLIUS 68-69 A.D. (the Civil Wars)

  VESPASIAN 69-79 A.D.

  When the Emperor Claudius died suddenly in 54 A.D. (it was suspected, probably with good reason, that he had been poisoned) he was succeeded by his nephew, Nero. Nero proved to be hopelessly inept and capricious, and finally, in 68 A.D., open revolt broke out. The leader of the revolt did not survive, but one of his supporters, Galba, the governor of Nearer Spain, was proclaimed emperor by his troops. The Senate confirmed this, and Nero, by now abandoned even by the Praetorian Guard, committed suicide in June. Galba, who was seventy-one at this time, began to march on Rome when he learned that Nero was dead. His arrival in the City was not without problems, and on New Year’s Day, 69 A.D., the army in Upper Germany revolted and called on the Senate and the Roman people to choose a successor. The following day the Lower German forces saluted an emperor of their own, Vitellius, the governor of Lower Germany. Galba, hearing what had happened and having no son of his own, decided he should adopt an heir as quickly as possible. His choice earned the lethal objections of Otho, who had been one of Galba’s supporters and had expected the succession for himself. On January 15 Otho had Galba put to death along with his heir. Vitellius then marched on Rome, and after a severe defeat, Otho committed suicide on April 16. The Senate promptly confirmed Vitellius as emperor. However, in the meantime the eastern legions and the troops of the Danube had transferred their allegiance to Vespasian, governor of Judaea. Vespasian’s Danube supporters arrived ahead of him, overwhelmed the army of Vitellius, dragged the short-lived emperor from his hiding place, and lynched him. The Senate hastily declared Vespasian his successor.

  With Vespasian began a relatively stable succession, but the memory of the Civil Wars, the Year of Four Emperors, remained as a horror in the minds of most Romans.

  Prologue

  He was called Correus, after a chieftain of his mother’s people in the old days, and he was conceived in a tent in a marching camp between Syria and Rome. His father was a professional soldier, Appius Julianus, legate of the Tenth Legion Fretensis, urgently recalled to Rome by the Emperor Claudius in that ruler’s last days. His mother’s name was Helva and she was seventeen, bought as a slave after a minor rebellion in Gallia Belgica some two years before. As a mistress she was entirely satisfactory. As a companion to a man who suddenly found himself up to his ears in the Emperor’s business, she became a liability, and he installed her among his young wife’s waiting women. Before he returned to the Emperor his wife had also conceived.

  Appius Julianus did his best for the aging Emperor, but in the end it did little good. Claudius died, amid whispers of poison, and Appius Julianus wisely made his peace with Nero, the Emperor’s great-nephew and successor. He then returned to his legion in Syria, which was about as far away from that unstable prince as he could get, and resumed his career with his beloved army.

  Behind him he left two sons, half-brothers, born within an hour of each other, and each a dark-side shadow image of the other.

  I The Gods of New Ventures

  By the time they were seventeen the physical likeness between them was uncanny, but the likeness in the soul was a dark, dimly sensed bond, and more often than not a tie that chafed where it was felt.

  Correus, feet braced against the chariot floor behind a team of his father’s ponies, sought to shake off the feeling that had clung to him all day and wondered if Flavius felt it too. The sensation had grown even stronger in the two years since their famous father had come home to retirement. And today there was something more than that in the wind.

  The gray ponies came into the turn, heads high, tails frisking in impatience against the tight rein. The light training chariot swung into the straight and he leaned forward. “Now – fly, you devils!”

  The ponies lengthened their stride, and his dark eyes narrowed against the wind and sunlight under the rim of his helmet. The helmet was ancient army-issue, stripped of its crest and insignia, and he had balked at wearing it four years ago when he had first begun to drive, protesting indignantly that it made his ears hot.

  “I’ll make your backside hot if I catch you with it off again!” old Diulius had said, jamming the helmet down over Correus’s brown hair. “Little good it’ll do you to split your head open like a melon before you’ve learned not to overturn yourself on a curve!” Diulius had driven a chariot himself once, in the Circus Maximus at Rome, and his word was law on the training track, even for the sons of the master. So Correus had worn his helmet, and now it seemed as much a part of him as the bones of his skull, although he still pulled it off occasionally – when Diulius’s watchful eyes were turned elsewhere – for the sheer pleasure of the wind in his hair.

  The ponies swept past the painted arm of the starting pole, and Diulius dropped the hand with which he had been methodically beating time on the fence rail. “The best yet! That is a team! Tomorrow we’ll try them against young Flavius and see how his blacks like being passed!”

  “Nay then, hold off a day or two, and don’t go stirring the waters just yet,” the man beside him said. He nodded toward the far ring where Flavius was putting a bay horse through its paces, weaving in and out through a line of upright poles.

  Diulius spat through the gap left after one of his teeth had remained behind, with a broken chariot, in the sands of the Circus. “Typhon take it! They aren’t a pair of fighting cocks. I can’t keep ’em apart forever. You let ’em train together yourself. It’s natural.”

  The other man, Alan, was a time-expired veteran of the cavalry auxiliaries and master of the horses that the estate sold to the army as remounts. “And when they do work together, nine times out of ten young Correus shows the better, and the young master looks fit to split his gut. I’m telling ye, Diulius, let it bide for now. Don’t race them.”

  “That’s pure spite, and young master would do well to unlearn it. He doesn’t want to be a charioteer anyway. He’ll follow the old general’s road and be a commander. Correus, now, he could have all Rome throwin’ him posies in the Circus. It’s a good way for a lad with no inheritance to make his way in the world.”

  “Aye, and he could take his shield in the cavalry,” Alan said, looking sideways at his old friend, “and do a job that’s fit for a man, not peacocking about in a fancy tunic t
o give some fat old hens a bit of excitement.”

  This disagreement was obviously of long standing. “Show me the man who ever got rich in the cavalry,” Diulius snorted, holding up his hand in salute as Correus pulled the grays up at the gate. “The best yet, lad! Now go and walk ’em dry before Sabinus gets here, or he’ll chew my tail for keeping you from your swordplay.”

  Correus pulled his helmet off and shook his head in the light breeze, brown hair clinging in damp waves about his sharp-angled face. “The gods forbid,” he said piously, and flicked the reins, grinning over his shoulder at the two trainers.

  Alan raised his arm and whistled, and the boy in the far ring turned his mount toward them.

  Flavius Appius Julianus the younger, called Flavius, also drew rein before the horsemasters. He was an inch or two shorter than Correus, with the same dark eyes and aquiline features, and dark curling hair like a faun’s. He ran a hand down the bay’s neck and gave an approving pat. “He’s shaping up well, Alan. All of this year’s lot are. I think it’s the best crop yet.”

  “Early days, young master,” Alan said. “But I’m thinking you may be right. Your father’ll give the army its money’s worth with this batch. Now off with you and get your shield.”

  Flavius nodded and trotted toward the horse barns while the two men watched. Alan sighed. “He’d be making a good man if he didn’t have a father like Julianus to live up to.”

  “That’s not the old general’s fault,” Diulius said.

  “It’s not anyone’s fault,” Alan said. “When your father’s a famous general, you’re expected to take up your sword with the Eagles, and he knows that.” The trainer looked at the straight, slim back astride the bay horse. “I wonder if he wants to.”

  “That’s like asking if young Correus wanted to be born a slave woman’s bastard,” Diulius said, exasperated. “Life turns out the way the Fates weave it for you, and you make the best of it. You ought to know that, you old fool.” Alan was a Briton and had first joined the Roman auxiliaries at spear point, part of a group of young warriors conscripted into the service after the conquest of their tribe. “And in any case,” Diulius said, “the general will hand him his manumission soon. He wouldn’t have wasted an expensive education on him if he wasn’t going to. Then we’ll see whose training sticks the best, yours or mine.”

  Alan was silent, running one hand through his gray hair. It was cut short in the Roman fashion, although he still affected the drooping mustache of his countrymen.

  Beneath his tunic his thighs were crisscrossed with scars, the occupational hazard of the cavalryman; and his feet, in soft leather boots, stood wide apart as if he still straddled an invisible mount.

  “You look like a broody hen,” Diulius said. “You know something I don’t, I suppose. I hope you’ve got sense enough to keep your fool nose out of it.”

  “Oh, aye,” Alan said finally. “There’ll be enough other noses stuck in.”

  * * *

  At the horse barns the two boys tossed their reins to the grooms who came running to take them and turned off together to the shed where the training weapons were stored. Side by side they looked more alike than ever, a mirror reflection marred only by Correus’s advantage in height and by the fact that in him their father’s dark curling hair was softened to light brown waves by his mother’s blond north-country origins. They had their father’s straight-backed military carriage – a bearing beaten into them young by Sabinus, the weapons master – and the confident, slightly arrogant stride of the privileged class. They were marked by their aquiline features and sharp-angled brows as their father’s sons, and they had been raised together from birth. When they were five, Correus had become his half-brother’s personal attendant, understanding even at that early age the boundaries of their relationship. They studied together, played together, and often enough got into trouble together.

  The old general had acknowledged Correus as his son, stamping him as a privileged person, set above the other slaves. But he was still a slave, of course, never a son at Flavius’s level. Correus learned well to keep the careful balance between his dual standing as son of the master and slave of the household. And if walking that fine line pricked at him occasionally… well, he had learned long ago that he had best stifle that as well.

  Correus pulled the laces free of his leather wrist braces and pitched them in the corner where Flavius had thrown his riding boots. They ducked their heads in the water bucket and shook like puppies. “That was a good ride,” Correus said. “Some cavalry commander’s going to thank you for that horse.”

  Flavius smiled. “Yes, that one’s too good for a trooper’s mount. I’ll tell Father to be sure he gets a fair price for him. That is, if he can spare the time from his grand plans for annoying his family,” he added with a grim twist to his mouth as he slipped on his sandals and put his foot up on the wooden bench to lace them.

  Correus heard a faint warning note at the back of his mind. There had been rumors lately, and he wondered if Flavius had heard them too. If they were true, he would have to tread lightly. “What iron has the general got in the fire these days?” he asked carefully, buckling on his sword belt and worn leather scabbard.

  Flavius slipped on his own belt and took a pair of battered military swords from the rack in the corner. “He’s taken a notion to find me a wife,” he said disgustedly. He shoved one sword home in his scabbard and handed over the other as Correus breathed a careful sigh of relief.

  “Well, that doesn’t sound so dreadful,” he said, grinning, as he took their shields from the wall. They were rectangular, overlaid with iron wings and jagged bolts of lightning barbed at the ends, and once they had borne their owners’ name, rank, and legion. Someday the sons of Appius would carry their like as officers in their own legion. Or Flavius would. A post in the Centuriate was Correus’s heart’s desire; but it was something he didn’t let himself think much on, because he might never get it. “I shouldn’t mind that so much if I were you,” he said, turning back to Flavius. (If I were you… If I were Flavius, I would take it all for granted just as he does, Correus thought bitterly.) Aloud he said, “You’ll be going into the Centuriate in a month. You won’t have to actually marry the girl for years yet, and you can go a-wooing where you will with no worries of a spear-point wedding.” A betrothal was considered as binding as a marriage in Roman eyes. “Unless – I mean… the girl’s not an absolute horror, is she? No warts or anything?”

  “She could be as ugly as Hephaestus for all I know,” Flavius said. “I’ve never laid eyes on her. As far as I can tell, her beauty in my father’s eyes consists of the fact that her father, whose name is Aemelius, has bought the estate to the north of ours and has no chick but this one girl child to leave it to. I doubt that Father would mind if she had two heads. Look at poor Junius. His father just married him off to a girl who’s only eight and already has a bottom like a hippopotamus. Can you imagine what she’ll look like when she’s old enough to bed?”

  “Well, if she’s only eight, he won’t have to bed her yet,” Correus replied.

  “For which he was thanking the gods, drinking, the last time I saw him!” They both laughed. “Come along. I’ll decide whether to cut my wrists or not after I’ve seen her. We’d better get our tails out to the practice ground. Sabinus’ll be chewing on his sword by this time.”

  They picked up shields and pilums and a pair of wooden sparring swords as well, then headed for the practice ground where the weapons master was indeed awaiting them, hopping mad, the more so as Appius Julianus had taken it into his head to come to observe his sons’ weapons drill that day. The older men fixed flinty eyes on the boys as they made their tardy appearance.

  They were lifelong soldiers both, cast in much the same mold, differing only by the circumstances of birth that had made one man a general, the other his twenty-year staff officer. Sabinus had risen from the ranks to centurion, and men who did that rarely went as far as cohort command, and never further. Sabi
nus had made his place instead on Appius’s headquarters staff in the days of the old general’s first command, and stayed with him into retirement.

  “And where in the name of Atalanta’s apples have you been?” Sabinus inquired, glowering.

  “We were sweaty and smelled of horse,” Correus apologized. He liked Sabinus and had no desire to embarrass him in front of Appius. “We stayed to wash.”

  “A waste of time,” Sabinus said, “since I’m going to make you sweat like you were in Egypt in midsummer. And if the general doesn’t like what he sees, you’ll do it all again.”

  Both boys groaned, since the general never liked what he saw, at least not publicly. “Go warm up,” Sabinus said, pointing to the stuffed straw dummies affixed to poles in the center of the practice ground. Both boys started to protest on the grounds that they were already warm, but then shrugged and headed for the straw men. They knew well enough what Sabinus’s retort would be – you didn’t use the same muscles to handle a horse that you needed to fight a man.

  They approached the straw men, shields up and swords in hand, in the lockstep formation – stab and take a step, stab and take a step – that was the core of the Roman fighting discipline. “The short sword and iron formation – that is the heart of the Eagles,” was a favorite maxim of Appius. Positioning their shields perfectly as they reached the straw men, they pierced them through, slicing quickly from below, under the straw men’s imaginary defenses. As always, each wondered briefly with the first thrust what it would be like when the sword bit into flesh and bone instead of the chaff of an autumn harvest: Flavius trying to feel how it would be when a man stabbed back, Correus how it would feel to kill a man he had never met.

  Sabinus watched, nodding with a certain amount of pride. “Blood will tell, sir,” he said to Appius. “Blood will tell, any way it’s mixed. You’ve bred a fine pair.” He pitched his voice low enough so his charges shouldn’t hear and get a swelled head. Then he called, “All right! Enough! Pilum drill, if you please, gentlemen!”