Sword of Rome(70)

‘Food,’ he shouted. ‘Bring me food.’

Every dispatch he received from Valens and Caecina contained less information than the one before, and the intelligence from his spies had dried up. If only he knew what was happening.



Gaius Fabius Valens, commander of the western arm of Vitellius’s forces, spat to try to rid himself of the taste of roasting flesh that seemed to coat his tongue and infuse the very air he breathed. The stink of freshly shed blood would stay with him much longer. Damn those Batavian savages. The mounds of burning wood and thatch around him had two hours earlier been the city of Divodurum, capital of the Mediomatrici, a Celtic tribe who had cheerfully prospered under Roman rule for more than a hundred years, but had been momentarily confused as to where their loyalty should lie. Valens had no doubt it could have been negotiated in Vitellius’s favour. What he had not known, and what he should have been informed of, was that a long-standing quarrel between the Mediomatrici and their Batavian neighbours had never been properly resolved. When the chief of the tribe hesitated on being faced with a choice between Otho and Vitellius, the eight Batavian cohorts attached to Valens’ column had swarmed through Divodurum like a pack of hungry wolves. Now the chief’s head was on a spear planted in the city’s main square and his people, men, women and children – four thousand at least – were either roasting in the glowing embers of their homes or lying in bloody pieces on its streets. He felt a clenching in his guts and gave a little grunt of pain. This atrocity could have one of two outcomes. Either the rest of the tribe would take their revenge on the Vitellian column – ambushes and delaying tactics, which would cost him casualties he could not afford and time he could afford even less – or word would spread of the terrible consequences of defying Vitellius, with the effect of hastening his passage.

He decided he would sacrifice to Mars for the second outcome. Until now, the gods had been kind. He had marched from Castra Bonnensis on the Rhenus to Divodurum at the headwaters of the Mosella in five days with the Fifth Alaudae at his back. They’d been followed by almost three thousand men apiece from his own faithful First Germanica, the Fifteenth Primigenia and the Sixteenth legion. For three of those days a large bird had been seen shadowing the column and the cry had gone up that it was an eagle, an omen of the greatest consequence because every man here followed the eagle standard of his legion. Valens thought it more likely to be a carrion bird of some sort searching out the inevitable detritus left by twenty-odd thousand men, but he kept his opinion to himself. He considered the journey that still faced him. From the Mosella they would go south to Cabillonum and from there take ship down the Rhodanus to Lugdunum; a veritable highway of rivers. If Fortuna smiled there would be no need for another bloodbath like this, but one way or another he had resolved that an example must be made. He looked towards the south gateway of the city, which had somehow survived the incendiary ravages of the Batavians.

‘Septimus!’ His chief of staff saluted and Valens gave his order in a low voice. ‘Choose three ringleaders from each of the Batavian cohorts. I want them tried and condemned and hanged from the gate by noon. We have no more time to waste on this.’

When the tribune had marched off shouting his orders, Valens reflected that he would give the Batavians the honour of leading the column from the city. When they marched through the gateway they would have plenty of time to contemplate the dangling consequences of their victory. Speed, he thought; I must make more speed. I must cross into Italia before that untrustworthy whoreson Caecina emerges from the Alps. And what is Galba doing to oppose us? I would have expected confrontation, or at least to have seen scouting patrols.

He had his answer the next day. An exhausted courier rode up to the headquarters tent on a blown, foam-flecked horse. It took him three attempts before he could deliver his message in a voice made breathless by the enormity of it.

‘The usurper Servius Sulpicius Galba is dead. Marcus Salvius Otho has been declared Emperor.’

The news hit Valens like a hammer blow. Had it all been for nothing? Just for a moment his mind was overwhelmed by dread, before the fear subsided and he could see clearly again. No, there was hope yet. The tortoise had been replaced not by the hare, but by the rabbit.

Speed. He needed more speed.



Aulus Caecina Alienus stared out over the battlefield. It was not meant to be like this. He had ridden ahead to brief the commander of the elite Legio XXI Rapax, which would form the core of his army, on his duties. Instead, he had discovered that the legionaries of the Rapax had already started a war. At first he had experienced near panic at this loss of control before the campaign had even started, but gradually he rediscovered calm. Caecina was a reluctant rebel, driven to insurrection by his fear of the deranged Valens, and the unfortunate discovery by Servius Sulpicius Galba of his borrowings from the treasury of Baetica. He had been brought up to believe that it was a Roman patrician’s duty to use the blood and sweat of his province to become a rich man. How was he to know that this only applied to governors and proconsuls, not a lowly quaestor made drunk by the fumes of his own power and led astray by hands as venal as his own? Galba it was who had raised him to the heady heights of legionary legate at the unheard-of age of twenty-nine. Galba it was who had been about to strip him of his command, bring him before the courts and destroy him. Now he had gambled his career and his life on a fat man who thought a hero’s sword made him a great general and whose only merit in Caecina’s eyes was the gullibility that made him so pliable. A curse on Emperors and may Jupiter’s arse rain down bolts of lightning on the head of Servius Sulpicius Galba.