Arthur Britannicus (5 page)

Those peeping civilians were playing with fire, for they would have been severely punished if their secret had reached military ears. The army had not gone soft. There were formidable disciplinary actions for wayward soldiers, and civilians were far less well regarded and faced even worse punishments.  Carausius and his fellow recruits learned some harsh facts. Desertion, the crime most feared by the officers, called for the offender to be clubbed to death by his fellow legionaries, on the premise that the coward’s action had put them all at risk. Mutiny, too, called for the worst punishment, and a general could order the decimation of a rebellious legion, when every tenth man selected by an officer walking down the ranks would be cudgelled to death by the previous nine of his comrades. It was a terrible vengeance designed to keep the rest of the troops obedient.

Lesser crimes drew fines, extra duties, demotion or mere reduced rations. The punishment for some minor crimes was to order the soldier to sleep outside the protected environs of the camp, when the dangers of a slit throat from a cutpurse not only gave most offenders a sleepless night but improved the watchfulness of the sentries.

Flogging was called for if a soldier was accused of ‘unmanly acts,’ and outraged senior officers would order the brutal flagellum, the ‘short whip’ normally used only on slaves, to be employed on discovered homosexuals.  It was a whip that would lay bare the spine itself in a few cuts, and a flogging with the metal-tipped flagellum usually ended in death. Treason, too, was fatal. A captured traitor would be tied inside a sack of snakes and thrown into a river, while cowardice called for execution by crucifixion or beheading.

“It seems harsh,” Carausius told a fellow recruit named Aemilius who questioned the brutality, “but I suppose if you do what you’re told, you’ll be all right. We’re just ground pounders, that’s all we need to know.” Privately, he thought some of the junior officers were sadists, but his intimidating size, energy and intelligence kept him safe from their attentions and as he was scrupulous in following orders, the young soldier found his life not too burdensome. He marched and drilled obediently, he and his comrades built city walls, bridges and roads under the supervision of engineer officers and he learned more and more about the disciplined army that ruled the world. Forum Hadriani was a hot spot in that world, a staging post for legions that were trying to hold back the Germanic tribes from beyond the Rhine. By now, of the empire’s 29 legions of 5,000 or more men, eight were massed on the banks of that mighty river, and Carausius’ training battalion was readying to join them.

“We’ve already seen divisions of our legions sent in to reinforce what we have there,” said Crassus, the First Spear centurion of the first cohort as he addressed the assembled legionaries. “They’ve come from everywhere, even…..” his glance fell on Carausius, whose impressive stature and front-rank position made him stand out, “… even from Britain.  The Second, Sixth and 20th Legions all helped build Hadrian’s Wall to keep out people, especially the ones like young Caros here who looks like a bloody great bear - ” he paused to allow the ripple of laughter to die down. “”Now, they’re in Germania, driving back the spear stoppers who threaten the Roman Peace.  And that’s where your duties will be taking you, so kiss your boyfriends in the town goodbye, wash your feet and get ready for some marching.”

VII. Beobwill

Just a few weeks later, to the bray of military brass, and burdened under their heavy packs, the legionaries lived up to their nickname of Walk-a-Lots, and marched south. They were trailed by the impedimenta of carts and mules carrying food and gear, all accompanied by a crowd of hangers-on, whores, traders, quack doctors and scam artists, and they were headed down the Rhine river to its confluence with the River Main at the great imperial fort of Mainz, long time headquarters of the XXII Primigenia legion, those Goth-killers whose commander had assumed the purple of Gallic emperor. 

The familiar march routine was quickly established and, day after day, they rose at first light to the sound of brass trumpets, ate a breakfast of olives, fruit and porridge prepared by the camp cooks, and were lined up with their loaded pack train by full sunrise. The daily six or seven hours’ march covered about 20 miles, before the legion halted to make camp and eat a dinner that usually included smoked fish or salted bacon and hard-baked bread, all dishes that would stay preserved on the journey, plus local cheese, vegetables and beer. In winter’s rain, the soldiers walked tortoise-style, holding their leather-sheathed, oblong shields above their heads for shelter, their packs swaying easily on the forked carrying sticks they balanced over their left shoulders. The emperor Marius had reformed the army and implemented his idea to speed the march by putting the load on the soldiers, not on the creakingly slow ox-drawn carts. The legionaries, the Mules of Marius, never forgot him. Most never forgave him, either.

At the end of the day’s trek, the routine was also always the same.  Surveyors, who had gone ahead literally to stake out a place, had invariably chosen higher ground with water and wood nearby. The arriving legionaries would dig a ditch about ten feet deep, throwing up the spoil to form a wall above it. This rampart, wide enough for sentries to walk through, was topped with the sharpened wooden stakes that each man carried, singly or as a pair.

Always, the encampment was plotted in exact fashion, with gates centred on each of the four walls. One faced the line of advance to the enemy; the gates at right angles to it were linked by the main street. An open space of 60 paces was left between the inside of the ramparts and the lines of tents, leather for the officers, canvas for the soldiers, which were laid out in the same pattern, camp after camp. On arrival at the night’s camp, every man knew
from experience where his quarters, the cookhouse, the latrines or the horse lines would be and could go unerringly to the same marked spaces to erect his tent just as he had hundreds of times before.  Equally, he and his officers knew exactly what their duties were each day, at every overnight halt, whether the legion stopped for one night or a whole winter.

For the next 30 months, Carausius moved in a blur of working, fighting and marching to the familiar, raucous, sometimes sentimental soldiers’ songs as the swaying columns tramped on, sometimes 40 or 50 miles in a single day. He and his comrades dug ditches and defensive dykes, cleared trees, repaired roads and built bridges, all while the legions pushed through the dripping forests and across the rugged, snowy Jura
mountains to the furthest frontier of the Danube river, to hunt the elusive enemy. The Briton and his comrades were in constant danger as Alemanni arrows flickered from ambush in the dank and gloomy forests, but from time to time the legionaries trapped their enemies and brought them to punishing, bloody conflict. Then, they’d face howling barbarians, crazed to fighting pitch on mead or forest mushrooms, confident that if they died, they’d reincarnate to fight another day. Those days, the Romans ruthlessly butchered the Alemanni, taking some captive for cruel and vengeful deaths as they remembered the comrades they had lost to the arrows and spears that had come without warning from the trees.

The young soldier became familiar with the throat-tightening knocking sounds of shield edges banging together as the shield wall was formed, he knew too well the smells of fighting: smoke, crushed grass, ripped guts, excrement and above all the iron-tasting stench of pooled blood. All were frequent, fear-heightened and vivid experiences, and all were stamped deep into Carausius’ memory.

By this time, the Briton was no longer the sickly child who had landed at Forum Hadriani. He was a 20 year old hardened soldier, a big man, bearded and brutal, who had won promotion to centurion through his wits and his scarred fists, which were testament to the opponents he had battered into submission.  He rejoiced in his ability to perform strenuous physical tasks, could cover 40 or more miles a day on a forced march under full pack, and still be ready to fight at the end of it. Confident but not a blusterer, Carausius had long since seen the close friendships of his old eight-man section erode as he earned promotions, but he had earned grudging admiration from the 80 men of his century for his savage energy and drive and for his willingness to take on any task. Behind his back, they called him ‘Car the Bear,’ a not-unaffectionate nickname based on his size, usual amiability and quick wrath when wronged. He expected strict discipline, and commanded unquestioning loyalty from his legionaries, from whom he demanded only a few simple obediences. He laid out his rules clearly.  “You don’t get drunk unless I say you can, you don’t steal from each other and you fight hard when I tell you,” he told them. “That’s it; three rules. Remember them, follow them, and we’ll all be better for it.” He did not spell out the alternatives, but after a few dissenters had been clubbed into submission by the centurion, the others learned not to question him, for in combat or a brawl he was a fearsome opponent. 

The roots of his fighting skills ran deep. During his early days in the army, Carausius had served in the 15th Legion, dedicated to Apollo, at their garrison on the Danube at Carnuntum. This was a vital military and trade outpost on the Amber Road, and was a key link between Rome’s Asian frontiers and its central and northern European territories.

Carnuntum was known as the place where the legions had acclaimed Septimius Severus emperor, but the settlement was most famed for its gladiator training school, a complex that was a mixture of barracks and high-security jail. There, convicts, prisoners and slaves, kept in cells barely big enough to turn around in, were brutally trained to fight in the arena. Carausius’ commander was a tribune with novel ideas of military instruction, and had sent his soldiers to be tutored by the gladiator trainers, who had taught the legionaries hand to hand tactics not found in the military manuals.

Carausius thrived on the task. He enjoyed the physical challenges, coped well with the discipline, worked hard at the skills, and learned street fighting techniques that would serve him well. “The average gladiator dies after six bouts, but some survive hundreds of times in the arena”, the instructors told the soldiers. “If you know their techniques, you can be a killing machine who will one day retire from the army alive, with a nice nut of booty and a piece of land. You will be confident of winning in a hand-to-hand combat, and that will help you to stay calm in a crisis. When you’re fighting some Norseman berserker who is crazed on mushrooms or mead before he goes into battle, you’ll move better and be more deadly. The best gladiators use these techniques literally for a living. If they don’t learn, or do it wrong, they’re dragged off by the heels to meet Charon and cross the Styx.” 

Carausius listened. He liked the idea of surviving when others did not, and he chose to work hard to improve his fighting skills. He practised with extra-heavy weaponry, toughening his considerable muscles even more, so that when he came to fight with swords or spears of regular weight, he fought faster and easier. He learned quickly, associating with both the instructors and the gladiators, learning a few words of each of their native tongues; German, Spanish, Illyrian and a half dozen others. He took care to remember the instructors’ individual fighting styles and tricks. Every man, he found had signature moves, every man fought to one of a score or so of patterns. Recognizing that pattern early in a bout gave him an advantage, and he took it.

Carausius was still stationed at Carnutum when he was first noted for his barracks brawling, and it was only a matter of months before his reputation was widely known, and very few would take on the crushing power of the massive fists or the devastating, unexpected blows from a knee, elbow or head butt that could finish the match.

As his legion campaigned, he used his gladiator’s techniques in hand to hand combat with Frankish and OstroGoth warriors who fought with a berserk fury that was often fuelled, as his instructors had said, with hallucinogens culled from woodland mushrooms. Then, Carausius was a cool-headed and expert killer, using his own hot hatred of the enemy as motivation, but fighting with a cold, focused intensity. Time and again, the big, bearded centurion was seen where he liked to be, in the front rank, battering his way through the enemy shield wall so his hacking, stabbing comrades could follow to butcher the shattered line of barbarians. Once, in an ambush sprung by a large war band of Saxons, he had not only rallied his men under a slashing hail of arrows, but coolly bought time for them to regroup by challenging one of the ambushers’ chieftains to single combat.

That day, the Romans’ overconfident tribune had made a bad error, and had brought his men through a defile where the soldiers could not deploy properly if attacked. It had to happen, it tempted the Fates, and the bored, malicious goddesses saw to their own entertainment.  The Saxons were concealed and waiting, the Romans were stalled at a blockage of felled trees; there were too few scouts out ahead and none on the flanks, because the defile was too narrow. There was no warning. Saxon arrows and javelins flickered out of the forest and struck with deadly force along almost the whole length of the stalled column, and howling barbarians came in behind them to swamp the standing file. In seconds, the unprepared legionaries were faced with a chaotic hand-to-hand struggle in which the soldiers could not deploy into their battle formation, and the Saxons’ superior numbers meant it was inevitable that they would splinter, isolate and butcher the legion. Carausius acted fast under the hail of missiles.  He mustered his century to form an armoured tortoise of covering shields and was working to drag the wounded and dying into shelter when he spotted in the Saxon ranks a big man who seemed to be a commander.

“That’s the noisy bastard I want,” he muttered to his marching companion Juventus, who was struggling to refasten a broken strap on his armour. “I can distract them, take him and put the fear of the gods into his hairy-arsed mates, too.”  Carausius grinned. “He’s like you, that Saxon; big, soft, and full of his own piss and wind. He’ll do nicely.” Juventus paused as he struggled with a recalcitrant buckle.

“He’s a big bastard, and he’ll have you for a snack, you ponce,” he goaded. “I suppose I’ll have to step in and drop him when he puts you on the ground.”  Carausius spat on the turf.

“If he puts me on the ground, yes, stick a couple of arrows into him. I don’t want any of your Roman etiquette-conscious polite ways putting me at risk.”

The Briton turned towards the German line, stepped clear and pointed his javelin at the big Saxon. “You are a coward who needs to eat fungus to give you the courage to fight. You are a woman who fights from behind trees,” he bellowed in his oddly-accented version of the Germanic tongue. “Come and see what a real man will do to you. Spread your legs for me, you whore, you know you want it.”  The grammar wasn’t right, but the message was clear. And, in an obscene gesture the Germans themselves often used, Carausius extended his middle finger at the big Saxon. The man’s cheeks flushed at the insults and he stepped out into the small clearing where the legionaries were frantically trying to pull the wounded inside the shield wall they had formed around the standard bearers.

“I am called Beobwill,” the big blond warrior boomed proudly.  “We’ll see who is the bitch here.”  He gestured to his war band to stop the javelins and arrows, and strode arrogantly forward. Along the line, the hail of missiles slowed, then ceased. The ambushers leaned forward on their weapons, panting and grateful for the interruption, to watch the sport.

Beobwill, whose plaited blond moustaches hung below his chin, was impressively large and fearsome. He wore bronze and gold bands on his massive, tattooed arms and a shaggy, sleeveless bear’s pelt jerkin over his leather breastplate. He wore calf-length trews and supple leather mid-boots laced tightly. His long fair hair under a plundered Roman helmet with its armoured cheek pieces was tied back with a leather lace, and in his broad belt he had a knife of Roman make whose handle was wrapped in kidskin held under gold wire. A war axe with runic inscriptions on its yard-long handle dangled casually from his fist.

Carausius, too, was a big man, and was professionally equipped for war. He had long since discarded the heavy mail coat favoured by most legionaries in favour of the expensive lobster-segmented armour that was much lighter. Internal leather straps held hoops of iron that overlapped horizontally around his torso, front and rear hoops laced together. His shoulders were protected by hinged iron plates and under the protective metal he wore a padded leather jerkin to absorb some of the shock of a sword blow or spear thrust. The leather was liberally smeared with lanolin taken from new fleeces, to allow the armour to move freely over it, and, where it was more exposed, was smeared with beeswax to waterproof it from the constant north European rain.

Like Beobwill, Carausius wore a Roman helmet, but his was an indulgence; a cavalryman’s parade piece, with a silver gilt Eagle standing before the polished crest. Over his shoulder, ready for a right-handed draw, was his gladius stabbing sword, of the shorter Mainz armoury variety. A bone-handled dagger with a long, slender, ribbed blade hung at his left side. He had, as was his custom, rubbed sticky pine sap on the handle to improve the grip, a trick he’d learned from the instructors at the gladiator school in Carnuntum. Carausius nodded almost amiably at Beobwill and dropped his great shield to the ground, but retained the heavy javelin with its shaft of squared ash and long bodkin head of needle-sharp iron. His teeth glinted through his dense curly beard as he laughed at his opponent.
“Nancy boy, eh? You’d like a man up your arse again, eh, you mincing bum boy?”