Eagles of Dacia Read online

  ‘No, that is not a no.’

  Rufinus grinned suddenly, and Senova held up a restraining hand.

  ‘But not while you smell like axle grease and old wet leather. Go and use the bath house and I will conjure up some real food while you are out.’

  Still grinning like a child with unexpected confectionary, Rufinus dug in his pack until he found the thick blanket which doubled as a towel on campaign.

  ‘Back shortly.’

  She nodded and he almost leapt out of the door, shutting it behind him and standing there for a moment, adjusting to the chilly air. The evening had brought a strange and jarring mix of horror, tension and elation, and he was unsure how to process it all, other than to let the happiness of an night with Senova override it all and try to forget for now about torturers and traitors and centurions with secrets.

  He frowned as he looked down at the street. Like most provincial towns, especially those built on a slope, Sarmizegetusa’s streets collected muck and detritus at the periphery and, while the empire’s great cities had slaves to sweep and clean the streets and empty the public urinals, places like this lacked such amenities. Consequently there was a thick layer of wet muck outside the house, and something about the marks in it struck him as odd.

  There were footprints outside the shuttered window. Of course, there could be a hundred reasons for people to leave prints there, but two things stood out. Firstly, the prints were hobnailed, making it fairly certain they were Roman boots, and secondly they faced the house in several positions, as though someone had stood there for some time, occasionally moving to ease his leg muscles. Someone had been listening at the window, and recently, for the prints were fresh.

  Feeling his heart start to pound, he crouched. There was a mark on each print. There must be a small triangular raised section on the sole of the left boot. He’d seen such things before where thrifty legionaries had patched their own boots with spare leather to save the cost of new ones. The man with this left boot had listened to Rufinus speaking with Cassius.

  So the man knew why Rufinus was here.

  Suddenly the veteran centurion’s caution seemed all too sensible. Rufinus’ gaze raked the area. Three soldiers were strolling this way at the top of the street, laughing despite the day as they passed around a flask of wine. Two dour-looking Dacian women stood outside a house’s door, beating a rug and emptying the detritus that had clearly built up in their home during the Sarmatian occupation. No suspicious-looking lone figure stared back at him from the shadows.

  He turned and pulled the door open, hurrying back inside and then sliding home the bolt, checking the window shutters were tightly fastened. Senova frowned at him where she was busy lighting a second oil lamp to throw back the shadows of the room.

  ‘Trouble?’

  ‘Bath can wait. You’ll have to put up with me smelling. Someone’s been loitering outside the window.’

  Her face suddenly became serious. ‘Cassius was right. This was neither the time nor the place.’

  ‘Something is going on, Senova. I’m not sure what, yet, but something underhand is going on with the Thirteenth Legion and its commanders. I’m beginning to think that Cleander might actually have been right about this place and its officers. If we can survive the fighting until Apulum and meet up with the rest of the legion, I might be able to get some answers, and then we could leave and return to Rome.’

  Senova nodded. ‘In the meantime, you need to be careful. People here don’t trust you, and some don’t like you. And with people starting to take an interest in why we’re here? Well, if life at court has taught me anything it’s that planting a knife in someone’s back is a surprisingly easy task.’

  Rufinus sank into the seat again.

  ‘And you. You’re with me and they all know it. I want you and Luca to stay in your accommodation or the wagon when you’re not with me, and keep Acheron close. He will protect you.’

  He reached for the wine bottle, and Senova made a disapproving clucking noise.

  ‘Remember your rule. One cup.’

  Rufinus sighed. ‘I think some circumstances might allow a bending of the rules, Senova.’

  ‘And dull your senses too? I think not.’

  She took the wine bottle from the table, next to his hovering hand, and replaced it with a cup of something yellow-ish white.

  ‘What in Hades is that?’

  ‘Goat’s milk.’

  His lip curled in distaste. ‘I am neither a goat nor a barbarian.’

  ‘Be careful what you say, Gnaeus Rufinus. I was raised on the stuff.’

  ‘And when I want to grow healthy boobs and a hog’s weight in sarcasm, I will drink it. For now, wine, water or fruit juice will suffice.’

  She swept away the cup and replaced it with another, glittering clear liquid sloshing around inside. ‘Water it is, then.’

  With a sigh, Rufinus took a sip of water. Tonight looked like being a long night. He perked up at a thought. After all, had not Senova said she would stay? Perhaps they…

  He caught her expression as she double checked the door and the window shutters, and sagged back into the cot. No. Probably not, now.

  IX – True war

  The high, frozen forests of Sarmizegetusa were a memory now for Rufinus, with their great walled fortress, the eerie sanctuary, the grisly hanging bodies and the funeral pyres. While the place had been fascinating in some respects, he had still been more than relieved to move on. Some things that had happened there would haunt him for many years.

  The following two days brought another change in both scenery and weather. A day slogging along steep sided valleys took them out of the forested region and into open grazing lands with flocks upon the high hillsides. The chill slowly diminished and left a grey world with a suggestion of impending rain. Then, at the end of that day, the cohort rounded a bend in the valley and found themselves looking out across a wide plain, dotted with farms. They camped there and awoke in the morning to periodic bursts of light drizzle as clouds scudded across the sky at surprising speed.

  With an odd mix of suppressed nerves at the thought of what they might be marching to face, and gloomy acceptance of the weather through which they were marching to face it, the cohort trooped out onto the flat lands and made good time tramping south-west at a mile-eating pace. Gradually, as they passed through the land of native farms, along avenues of bare, scrubby trees and between ploughed fields, mute evidence began to appear that all was not well in the region of Ulpia Traiana.

  The first sign was an empty village. Not a big place – just seven houses and a few farm buildings – but it was deserted with the fields still sown, scrawny animals left unfed in their enclosures, houses intact and containing whatever goods were not worth taking. There was no indication of a fight, but a dark patch of soil at the centre of the village was highly suggestive of blood. The tribune had his men forage and take anything they could use on their journey. It might have been practical, but the orders sat poorly with the superstitious among the men.

  Not with Daizus, of course, who almost delighted in such authorised theft. Rufinus still had not dealt with the matter of the man’s insubordination during the siege. The battle’s aftermath, and other concerns, had delayed it, and the longer the issue stretched out, the harder it was to find a reasonable way of approaching the matter without looking like an idiot.

  Cassius Proculeianus had noted at the farm then that they were less than five miles from Ulpia Traiana, and each half mile beyond that brought fresh signs of trouble. A burned out building. A deserted farm. A pile of bodies outside a shack, mouldering in the damp air. As if to add a level of bleakness to the day, the clouds continued to drop regular showers of drizzle upon them. The evidence was mounting up that this pocket of active raiders was still horse-borne and causing trouble, rather than settled and intending to remain.

  Rufinus felt his nerves reach new heights as the shape of Ulpia Traiana coalesced ahead in the grey. Nestled in the foothills at t
he edge of the plain, with high mountains throwing distant blue grey shapes crowned with snow up behind, the city was a proper Roman town, square and heavy, on a slight rise, with four stout walls. Smoke rose from the place and it took breath-stealing moments to become apparent that it rose from chimneys and flues and not from burning houses and bodies. Rufinus felt a thrill of relief flow through him at the realisation. Then, as they came closer, something else struck him and the nerves returned. As with all cities, there was some civic overflow beyond the walls. An amphitheatre, temples, housing, a bathhouse and more lay below the town on the northern slope, and while smoke indicated occupation within the town, there was no sign of life in these outer buildings, and no smoke to indicate that the baths were operating. No local farmers tended fields, and no children played.

  The rest of the cohort had clearly noted the same thing, and the atmosphere became edgy, men’s eyes darting left and right nervously, picking out imagined threats. The column marched up between two buildings that stood silent and empty, past the great curve of the soundless amphitheatre, the baths and several ornate temples, toward Ulpia Traiana’s north gate.

  The city was more than a settlement. It was a statement. When Trajan and his armies had come and ripped troublesome Dacia from the clutches of its king eighty years ago, they had torn down his capital and garrisoned it with legionaries. They had then built a new capital here, with all the trappings of empire. There, Trajan was saying, is what you were. Here is what you will become. But times change and boundaries shift, and now the province was ruled from Apulum. This grand place was a city only, full of monuments to a controlling power that had moved.

  Two men stood above the gate, which remained firmly closed, other figures in evidence along the walls. As the column came to a halt, Celer at the fore now with Cassius close by, the great timber leaves creaked open, and relief crept into Rufinus once more, though still tempered with a touch of nerves.

  ‘Who are you?’ Celer demanded of the men above the gate. ‘Identify yourselves.’

  ‘Claudius Crescens, formerly of the First Aurelia Antonina Cohort, sir. Retired. This is my colleague Julius Artemas, formerly Second Gallorum.’

  Rufinus smiled. Retired soldiers were almost always stout men in a troublesome situation.

  ‘Well, Claudius Crescens,’ the tribune replied, ‘perhaps you could tell me what you know of the Sarmatian raiders reportedly still operating in this area.’

  Crescens nodded and disappeared for a moment. By the time the gates were fully open and the main street toward the high forum was in view, the former auxiliary soldier had appeared at ground level and strode out to meet them. He wore an old military tunic of green wool and a military belt. Though he was unarmoured, as well as a sword, a sling and pouch of stones hung at his side.

  ‘There are maybe a hundred and fifty of them by my estimation, sir. They came months ago and tried to ravage the city. We don’t have a full military presence these days, but there are quite a few of us veterans here, so we shut the gates and manned the walls and denied them Ulpia Traiana. We have two scorpion bolt throwers and a few bows and slings, so they paid in wounds any time they came too close. They disappeared for a while, and we thought they’d gone, but they reappear every now and then. We’ve formed a small garrison of local lads, and we keep Ulpia Traiana safe, but we’re too few to take on the raiders, so there’s not much we can do to protect the local settlements.’

  Celer nodded his understanding. ‘That is why we are here.’

  ‘Good job, Tribune. They’re somewhere nearby in the hills. They rove around the area ravaging farms and villages. We sent to the nearest auxiliary fort, asking if they would come and deal with the raiders, but they remain at Agnaviae.’

  Celer waved a dismissive hand. ‘The governor has issued strict orders to all military installations within fifty miles of the border to maintain their garrison in position, given the ongoing threat of further incursions. That garrison is needed in place as part of the general defensive system. What is your latest information on the raiders?’

  ‘Two days ago they were spotted on the other side of that range of hills to the north, about five miles away. A forester and his family turned up at the gates seeking refuge, since their hovel had fallen to the raiders while they hid in the woods and watched.’

  The tribune straightened. ‘We shall camp here tonight, then, and in the morning, we move on the raiders.’

  Rufinus felt a mixture of relief and regret. At least they would have a night’s rest, but it would have been nice to be inside the walls in a bathhouse and a barrack, rather than outside under leather.

  That night the cohort pitched their tents below the city walls with just pickets for defence. The Tribune spent the night in the city, a guest of the town’s councillors, residing in the former procurator’s house, while Rufinus spent the evening in the company of Senova and Acheron, still mindful of the fact that someone knew his true reason for being here and that prying eyes and listening ears could be anywhere around them.

  ‘What are the Iazyges like, then?’ she asked as she stitched the hem of her spare tunic.

  ‘Those we fought at Sarmizegetusa were Iazyges, but not typical ones, I think. They’re horsemen in the main. Semi-nomadic. I fought them once, back under Aurelius in my first year with the legion. They’d been part of the war for ages, and they surrendered that same year. I remember them in battle though. They charged in a mass, with lances levelled, and hit us like a runaway wagon. Only good discipline and anti-cavalry formations saved us. They were terrifying, but once you got them off their horses, they were like fish out of water and easy prey for legionaries, a bit like the ones back at Sarmizegetusa. I remember a five hundred strong unit of them serving alongside the Tenth in the last year of the war. They were considerably more dangerous, since they’d picked up Roman habits too.’

  ‘I am baffled,’ Senova said, ‘why Clodius Albinus has left these groups to cause trouble for so long, when he could have used part of his own force or some local unit to deal with them.’

  Rufinus sagged. ‘I can see why he would keep the border garrisons in place. But I agree that the idea of leaving this half-trained cohort to deal with pockets of resistance is strange, when he must have marched the rest of the legion past these same places to get back to Apulum. Whatever was happening there, he must have considered it more important than the safety of provincial towns.’

  ‘The gold.’

  Rufinus nodded. Yes. The famous Dacian gold mines. Albinus had ignored all sorts of trouble in order to make sure his mines were secured. On a whim, he moved to the tent entrance and quickly thrust his head out, hoping to surprise anyone lurking nearby. There was no one there.

  ‘Have you found out who was listening at Sarmizegetusa?’

  He shook his head. Over the past two days he had taken every opportunity to examine boot soles when they came into view, but as yet had not spotted the tell-tale mark.

  ‘Get some sleep,’ she said comfortingly. ‘You’ll need to be fresh tomorrow. I’ll stay here with the wagons and the town garrison, but you’ll be gone early.’

  ‘Keep Acheron with you.’

  She shook her head. ‘He hates it when you go without him.’

  ‘I know. But there’s no guarantee of safety for you, even with the cohort gone. I will not be able to concentrate on the fight if I’m worrying about you. Acheron stays with you this time.’

  In the event, his night had been one of broken sleep and unsettling dreams, and when the cohort moved out in the morning, into constant heavy rain, he felt groggy and achy. The watery sun, visible principally as a lighter patch of cloud, had not been in the sky for long before they acquired their first information. They skirted the low hills Crescens had indicated, passing by to the east. As they rounded a spur, they passed more burned and destroyed settlements and then, three miles from the city, they found a small party of Dacians with a wagon and ox, heading south. A brief enquiry confirmed that they were heading
for the city, since their village had been destroyed. Just two miles away, they said, the Iazyges had still been busy revelling in destruction a little over an hour ago.

  The cohort moved on, the tension growing with each sodden step.

  ‘Be prepared for sudden cavalry action,’ the tribune called back to his men. ‘Contra equitas formation is the drill of the day.’

  Rufinus felt a waver of uncertainty then. It was a good formation and effective against cavalry, but were these men ready? He’d practiced it, along with several other formations, at Drobeta, and his century had managed to pull it off well enough a few times. But that was on a parade ground. When faced with charging Sarmatians, it would be a whole different matter.

  He ruminated on the worry for some time, and had come no closer to contentment when word of the enemy came. The scouts returned and brought some detail. There were indeed over a hundred riders in the enemy force. They had finished looting the village that lay in the bottom of a shallow valley, but had moved a little way up the slope and were busy with what looked like a rural villa.

  The tribune’s face took on a stern set, and Rufinus found it distasteful to realise that Celer had been all business when the Dacians were being set upon, but now that it appeared to be a Roman target, the man had become incensed.

  The cohort moved on, cresting a low rise until the village and its attackers came into sight. Two dozen houses flanked a narrow stream that ran along the valley bottom cutting across their path. A low wooden plank bridge crossed the stream. The villa that stood on the gentle slope beyond was no grand Roman estate, just a small rural house with a vineyard and an orchard, but it was clearly Roman. Even from here, Rufinus could identify the peristyle form, columns by the entrance, a low drum-shaped mausoleum not far away. The riders were visible too, moving in a seemingly chaotic pattern around the villa and its grounds.

  The cohort was closing on the village by the time the enemy suddenly became aware of the Roman presence. Warning cries went up, and a dragon-shaped standard was held aloft, the wind howling through it and making an eerie keening sound. The enemy began to cluster together, but made no move toward the newly-arrived Romans.