‘My sentence is delayed for another day. Besides, I have never met the Emperor …’ She hesitated and he sensed she wanted to say more, but she turned and walked back to the coach.
They crossed to the east bank and followed the road to the town of Bedriacum where the Emperor’s main force had made their headquarters. The first thing Valerius noticed as they approached the great military encampment outside the walls was the golden lion of the Thirteenth Gemina on the shields of the gate guards. The sight raised his spirits because it meant Otho’s reinforcements had begun to arrive from the East. The second was a curiously unmilitary sprawl of tents with an odd-looking assortment of men lazing around campfires among them. Many wore makeshift bandages and bore signs of recent wounds. It was as he was studying them that one of the reclining figures rose to his feet and hailed him.
‘Still alive, Valerius? And unless I miss my guess, that ugly bastard behind you is a Spanish horse thief of my acquaintance.’
Valerius gaped in disbelief at the man who had spoken. He was grey-haired and stocky and he carried a brass cock’s comb helmet that had seen hard use. The helmet marked him as a gladiator, even if the deep scar that split his right cheek and his missing left ear weren’t familiar enough. ‘Marcus?’ He shook his head at the sight of his old friend, who should be back in Rome, running the ludus where he trained the Empire’s most sought-after gladiators. Serpentius leapt from his horse to wrestle with the lanista who had coached him for the arena and whose tricks had kept him alive long enough for Valerius to rescue him from certain death.
‘You’re a long way from the training ground. I thought you never ventured more than a mile from the Argiletum and the Green Horse. Have they retired you?’
The lined face took on a solemn look. ‘Not much need for a beaten-up old lanista at the best of times, but when every ludus in Rome is closed down and every gladiator signed up to fight for the Emperor, you know the game’s up. I couldn’t let my lads march away on their own, so here I am. A year’s pay for every man who fights and his freedom if he survives.’
‘You already have your freedom, and I doubt you need the money.’ Valerius didn’t hide his puzzlement.
Marcus shrugged. ‘Aye, but these men are fighters – man for man, they are a match for any legionary – but what they are not is leaders.’ His face split in a self-conscious grin. ‘They elected me commander of the second century and here I am.’
‘It looks as if you’ve already been in a fight,’ Serpentius observed.
‘Not a fight.’ Marcus’s face clouded. ‘A massacre. Two nights ago our commander volunteered to destroy a bridge the enemy had built near Cremona. They had already tried with fireships, but the wind drove them ashore. We were to capture an island upstream of the bridge and launch an attack from there. We were betrayed.’ He glanced up and Valerius thought he read a message in the pale eyes. ‘Yes, you’ll find there is much talk of betrayal and cowardice in this camp. When we reached the island it was already crawling with Tungrian auxiliaries. Hundreds were killed in their boats. Some of us managed to reach land and fought, but when our brave leader turned and ran the rest of us followed as fast as we could row. When we started out from Rome there were two thousand of us. Now there are just one thousand. The rest are dead, or have deserted.’
Valerius studied the sullen, suspicious faces of the men watching the conversation. They were of a mix familiar to him from the days he had trained at Marcus’s school and ranged from hulking giants who looked as if they could crush a skull with their fingers to men so small they could almost be called midgets. Their exotic paraphernalia was the same equipment they wore in the arena – strange helmets and armour from barbarian tribes and the troops of long-forgotten empires – and they carried the same weapons: curved swords, boar spears and even tridents. They had two things in common: they were some of the fittest men he had ever seen and every man had been marked by defeat. ‘Will they fight again?’
Marcus hesitated for only a moment. ‘If they are well led.’
Otho had taken over the praetorium in a tented pavilion at the heart of the First Adiutrix camp. As he approached, Valerius didn’t know what to expect. After all, he was the man the Emperor had been prepared to have killed and who had failed in his mission. The welcome turned out to be warmer than he had a right to expect. Otho immediately broke off his discussion and led the one-handed tribune aside. The other man had changed since Valerius last saw him, the handsome features more drawn and careworn, and to Valerius’s surprise he was wearing a simple legionary’s tunic and armour. ‘I fear I did not expect to see you again, but I am glad you are here. We are in need of every seasoned soldier who can carry a sword. You have come from where?’