Fire and Sword. Harry Sidebottom

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СКАЧАТЬ of a skeleton would serve. He had worn it on his belt for years, thought it brought him luck. He would dedicate it in the Temple of Belenus in Aquileia. Menophilus smiled. Once he had thought he was on the path to Stoic wisdom, now he accepted that he had not advanced a step. Far from a sage, he was still a fool mired in superstition.

      If the gods had not had a hand, a strange combination of efficiency and negligence on the part of his enemy had given Menophilus this opportunity. With the competence of years in the field, Flavius Vopiscus had built the pontoon bridge, got the siege train across the river, and marched off towards his objective. All had been accomplished with alacrity, yet, displaying a carelessness that could only have come from an utter contempt for those ranged against him, Maximinus’ general had not thought it necessary to bring any cavalry. It had made the task of Menophilus’ scouts simple. Operating in pairs – one from the 1st Cohort, and a local volunteer – they had kept their distance. Menophilus had no wish to disturb the complacency of Vopiscus. All he needed to know was the whereabouts of Vopiscus’ main force.

      The four thousand or so Pannonian legionaries that comprised the advance guard of the imperial army were camped, along with the wagons carrying the disassembled siege engines, ten miles to the west on the Via Gemina, about six miles north-east of Aquileia. Informed of that, Menophilus’ strategy had been obvious. A night march from the city, east along the Via Flavia to reach the river, and then follow the stream north. Get behind Vopiscus, approach the bridge without his knowledge. The farm had been a worry. Half a mile from the site of the Pons Sonti, when Menophilus had been here before, it had contained an enemy piquet. They could warn the garrison of the bridge. Extraordinarily – yet more evidence of lax overconfidence – the guard had been withdrawn from the farm. The house, barn, sheds, and huge wine barrels were all empty. Now Menophilus’ auxiliaries were resting in the farmstead, eating cold rations as an early midday meal, waiting for his signal.

      Menophilus himself was back in the woods, lying, wrapped in a dark cloak, among the beech trees and elms, under whose boughs young Barbius had been hacked to death. He pushed the thought away. Guilt served no purpose. What could not be changed was an irrelevance. The youth’s father would not see it, but death was nothing. It was a release.

      The river was even higher than before. Its waters surging through the roots of the willows on its banks, breaking white over the remains of the piers of the demolished stone bridge, tugging with immeasurable force at the pontoons of its replacement. The little rowing boat had gone; perhaps, if carelessly moored, it might have been swept downstream by the force of the current.

      Waiting was the hardest part of battle. Menophilus did not fear death. What was life but standing in the breech, awaiting the barbed arrow? Nothing was certain in war – one should never take the favour of the gods for granted – but he had few doubts about the outcome of the day. Below him less than a hundred men of the 10th Legion Gemina still guarded the nearer, western end of the bridge. There were more enemy troops at the far end; among the trees, their numbers could not be gauged, but there was no reason to think them any greater. Menophilus outnumbered the foe, by two to one, or more. Surprise was on his side. Wait for the right moment, when the legionaries were at their most unready, a sudden charge, seize the bridge, and sever the cables securing the pontoons. The river would do the rest. Vopiscus, the advance guard and the siege train, would be isolated on the Aquileian side of the Aesontius. Maximinus and the main army left stranded on the other. It would not win the war, but it would delay and frustrate the enemy.

      The eight men who would wield the axes and cut the bridge were volunteers. Menophilus had consulted an engineer, a sardonic individual called Patricius. Part the cables holding together the two central pontoons, and the river in spate would tear the rest of the structure apart in moments. The volunteers had been promised great rewards, comparable to those first over the walls in the storming of a city. Their names were all listed, as were those of their dependants. In the myth Horatius, the bridge demolished behind him, had swum the Tiber in full armour. Today, Patricius assured him, many, perhaps all of the men with axes would be claimed by the Aesontius.

      Menophilus watched the grey-green water rushing past, inexorable and carrying all manner of flotsam. His eyes rested on a branch, a drowned cat, another branch; always changing, always the same. When he had been here before, his duty had seemed clear. The Gordiani were dead. His post was at Aquileia. Who the Senate placed upon the throne was none of his concern. He would remain at Aquileia, defend it to the best of his ability, defend it to the last. Now he was not so sure. Had grief warped his judgement? Maecia Faustina and the boy Junius Balbus remained in Rome. Young Gordian had never been close to his sister or nephew, but they were his blood. With a new regime, the relatives of the old rulers were at risk. The house of the Gordiani was wealthy, its stored-up treasures might provoke the cupidity of any new Emperor. Should Menophilus have left the defence of Aquileia to his colleague Crispinus? Should he have gone to Rome to safeguard the Domus Rostrata and its inhabitants, to protect a widow and her child?

      What of the pitiful remnants of the familia that had escaped from the disaster in Africa? With old Valens the Chamberlain had come Gordian’s concubine, Parthenope. She was pregnant. If Parthenope had not been a slave, and if the child she carried was a boy, he would have been heir to the throne. For a Stoic, freedom and slavery were not defined by the laws. Inside every individual was a spark of the divine Logos. If his soul was servile, the King of Persia was a slave, while, if such was his nature, the lowest slave in chains could be a King. Outside Rome, in the Villa Praenestina, there were already many slaves fathered by the younger Gordian. Somehow this unborn child was different. Menophilus had dined and laughed with Parthenope. It did not seem right that his friend’s posthumous child should live in servitude.

      Down by the river, smoke was curling up from the cook fires. The legionaries were beginning to mill about, starting to prepare food. Only ten of them still stood to arms, a few yards out in the road. It was time.

      Menophilus turned to Flavius Adiutor, the Prefect of the 1st Cohort.

      ‘Bring up your men. The show should begin.’

      With heightened senses, Menophilus tracked the departure of Adiutor; the chink of his armour, the snap of each twig, the suck of mud at his boots. It had rained very hard in the night, but the blustery wind from the south-west had blown away the clouds. The sun shone from a ceramic blue sky, dappling the road where the trees overhung. Yet if the wind remained set, it would bring more storms.

      No body of troops ever moved in silence. You could order them to muffle their arms, wrap their boots in rags, but it was almost impossible to convince them of the necessity of removing the good luck charms from their belts. What was the point of silence, if it might occasion your death? Menophilus was in no position to judge them. He heard the jingle of ornaments of Adiutor’s men before the tramp of their feet. Eyes never leaving the legionaries down by the bridge, he could not help grinning at his own prescience. The customary levity of meal times – the shouts and songs, the clatter of utensils – would mask the sound of the approaching auxiliaries. The timing was perfect, and his men were fed, the enemy hungry. An empty belly sapped a man’s courage.

      Menophilus warned himself against taking pride in his foresight. Do not tempt the gods. Worldly success was worthless.

      Slipping back through the wood, Menophilus waited for the auxiliaries around the bend in the road, out of sight from the bridge. They came into view. Five Centuries, steel helmets, mailcoats, weather-beaten faces above oval shields; these were hard men, veterans transferred from the East by Maximinus for his northern wars. Now they would fight against the Thracian. All men were bound to fate, like a dog to a cart.

      They halted, and Menophilus went through the plan once again with Adiutor and the Centurions. One Century was to remain here, as a reserve. The others were to go down to the river. Around the corner, it was less than a hundred paces to the Aesontius. They should charge at a jog, maintain silence, keep their order, shout their war СКАЧАТЬ