RETRIBUTION Read online

  Contents

  Also by Anthony Riches

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map

  Acknowledgements

  List of Characters

  Preface

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Historical Note

  By the same author in The Centurions series

  Betrayal

  Onslaught

  By the same author in the Empire series

  Wounds of Honour

  Arrows of Fury

  Fortress of Spears

  The Leopard Sword

  The Wolf’s Gold

  The Eagle’s Vengeance

  The Emperor’s Knives

  Thunder of the Gods

  Altar of Blood

  www.hodder.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Hodder & Stoughton

  An Hachette UK company

  Copyright © Anthony Riches 2018

  The right of Anthony Riches to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Map illustration by Clifford Webb

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 473 62882 3

  Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  www.hodder.co.uk

  For Helen

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Over the course of this amazing, enthralling and occasionally surprising trilogy, I have never ceased to be indebted to the patience of my editor Carolyn and the invaluable assistance of her assistants Abby, Thorne and Madeleine, the ever-indefatigable publicity efforts of Kerry and Rosie, and the gentle but persistent encouragement – only very occasionally backed up with strong language – of my wife Helen. My thanks to all of you who helped, cajoled and generally drove me to deliver a readable story that still did some measure of justice to the amazing twists and turns of this episode in Rome’s history.

  Jona Lendering, the driving force behind the indispensible Livius website (livius.org), was kind enough to cast an eye over the manuscripts and point out any gross errors. His comments have been invaluable on more than one occasion (‘There were no trees there so your character can’t run off and hide in them’, for example), and the series has benefitted hugely from his input. Thank you, Jona.

  Ben Kane was instrumental in helping me mull over the choice of titles that eventually coalesced into the three that have proven so evocative, to the degree that they have tended to reflect each book’s contents even better than I ever intended. The fact that we conducted part of that long-running discussion driving from Xanten (the Old Camp) to Kalkriese (the site of Arminius’s momentous betrayal of Rome in AD9) only added to the enjoyment. And speaking of the Old Camp, Ben and I walked the site of the legion camp – now farmland – as the evening’s last light faded into night, and came across the remnants of the fortress’s amphitreatre, still in use for concerts. I can’t tell you here the brilliant idea that he then spontaneously gifted to me, or it’d be a spoiler, but it typified the generosity of a man I’m proud to call a friend. Thanks Ben!

  And, just as heartfelt as ever, thank you, the reader, for continuing to read these stories. Please keep reading. We were only ever taking a temporary break from the Empire series, and now that the story of the Batavian revolt as seen through the eyes of the men I’ve imagined fighting on both sides is done, Marcus and his familia are set to return in the tenth book of the Empire series. There’s a murderous bandit on the loose in Gaul, an imperial chamberlain toying with our heroes’ lives and … Well, wait and see, eh?

  One last thing. There’s a gold aureus from the time of Vespasian – yes, a real Roman gold coin – to be won by one lucky reader in my Centurions competition. All you have to do is go to my website and enter the answers to the three questions that you’ll find there, the solutions to which are contained in Betrayal, Onslaught and Retribution. There’s no restriction on when you enter each answer, multiple entries are allowed but the last answers given will be taken as your definitive entry, and all answers will be invisible to everyone except myself and my trusted webmaster (who’s not allowed to enter). So don’t hold back, get puzzling, think acrostically (and if that’s not a clue then I don’t know what is), and the very best of luck – someone’s got to win a precious piece of history. Why not you?

  LIST OF CHARACTERS

  AD70

  In Egypt

  Titus Flavius Vespasianus – legatus, imperial 2nd Legion Augustan

  Gaius Hosidius Geta – legatus, imperial 14th Legion Gemina

  Sextus – senior centurion, imperial 14th Legion Gemina

  AD70

  In Rome

  Gaius Licinius Mucianus – consul

  Quintus Petillius Cerialis – legatus augusti, imperial Roman army

  Tiberius Pontius Longus – legatus, imperial 21st Legion Rapax

  Pugno – first spear, imperial 21st Legion Rapax

  Alfenius Varus – former commander of the Praetorian Guard, emperor’s emissary to the Batavians

  Gaius Sextiliius Felix – legatus, auxiliary cohort

  Julius Briganticus – commander of the Ala Singularium, Kivilaz’s nephew

  Appius Annius Gallus – legatus, commander of four legions in Gallia Lugdunensis

  In the Old Camp (modern day Vetera)

  Aquillius – senior centurion, imperial 15th Legion Primigenia

  Marius – senior centurion, imperial 5th Legion Alaudae

  Munius Lupercus – legatus commanding imperial legions 5th Alaudae and 15th Primigenia

  Batavi warriors

  Kivilaz – (known as Julius Civilis by Rome) – prince of the Batavi, commander of the tribe’s revolt against Rome

  Hramn – commander of his cohorts (formerly leader of the imperial German bodyguard), Kivilaz’s nephew

  Draco Bairaz – commander of the guard cohort, Kivilaz’s cousin

  Brinno – king of the Cananefates tribe, allies of the Batavi

  Alcaeus – wolf-priest, centurion, 2nd century of the 1st Batavian cohort

  Egilhard (Achilles) – watch officer, leading man, son of Lataz, brother of Sigu

  Hludovig – Alcaeus’s chosen man

  Sigu – soldier, brother of Egilhard

  Lataz (Knobby) – soldier, father of Egilhard and Sigu

  Frijaz (Stumpy) – soldier, uncle of Egilhard and Sigu

  Adalwin (Beaky) – soldier

  Levonhard (Ugly) – soldier

  Lanzo (Dancer) – soldier

  Wigbrand (Tiny) – soldier

  AD70

  In Novaesium

  Gaius Dillius Vocula – legatus augusti, legion commander

  Antonius – senior centurion, imperial 22nd Primigenia

  Herennius Gallus – former legatus, imperial 1st Germanica

  Numisius Rufus – forme
r legatus, imperial 16th Gallica

  AD70

  Germania Inferior

  Julius Classicus – prince of the Nervii tribe and prefect of the First Nervian cavalry cohort

  Montanus – Classicus’s cousin

  AD70

  Gallia Belgica

  Claudius Labeo – prefect, commander of army of allied tribes

  Preface

  It is January of AD 70, and Roman rule in northern Europe is teetering on the edge of disaster. Weakened by civil wars, first between Otho and Vitellius and then Vitellius and Vespasian, the legions whose fortresses safeguarded the Rhine frontier are either under siege or pathetic remnants of their former strength. The Batavi tribe of Germania Inferior and their tribal allies from both sides of the great river have moved decisively to defeat every attempt to contain their revolt, and the Gallic tribes to their south plot a similar rebellion, planning their own ‘Gallic Empire’. At a point in the struggle to defeat the Batavis’ revolt when every soldier is needed, two legions are bottled up in the Old Camp, present-day Xanten, while two more are on the brink of mutiny, having murdered their general for the crime of favouring the victorious Vespasianus. To the men charged with holding off a Batavi thrust to the south, defeat seems inevitable.

  In Italy, on the other hand, preparations are well in hand for the re-conquest of the land north of the Alps, with legions under orders to march from their duty stations in Hispania and Britannia to join those returning north over the mountains to reclaim their fortresses and enforce Rome’s will. First among them is the famed Twenty-first Rapax, at least to its officers and men, long the most infamous unit in the emperor’s army, left bitter and in need of bloodshed by defeat at the Second Battle of Cremona whose loss resulted in Vespasianus’s victory. And the Twenty-first is under the command of the emperor’s son-in-law Petillius Cerialis, himself a man with a point to prove having been disgraced in the war against Boudicca’s Iceni rebels. The rebels have yet to face such crack soldiers, or men with quite so much need for vindication.

  And the Batavi cohorts themselves are not the force that marched north to join the rebellion less than six months before. Bled of much of their strength at Gelduba late the previous year, they are no longer pre-eminent in the rebel army led by their prince, Kivilaz, but in the fighting to come, the Romans are likely to learn the hard way that the most dangerous opponent is the one with his back against the wall – and with nothing more to lose.

  Prologue

  The Old Camp, January AD 70

  ‘Once we are out on the field of bones you must all move in total silence.’

  The grizzled chieftain looked around the circle of men gathered around him, staring at each of them in turn. His last remaining son, his brothers and his nephews. All of them were beloved to him, his blood and that of his father, all were men of whom he was proud. And there were a good number fewer than there had been at summer’s end, when, with the harvest gathered, he had led them to war to answer the call of the Batavi prince, Kivilaz, and make fact the prophecies of the priestess Veleda in her prediction of a great German victory.

  ‘If the Romans hear us out here then they will shoot their machine arrows out into the dark, and while we make small targets in a wide, empty night we have all seen the horror of a man killed in such a way. Death is certain, but it is not always swift. And their machines are not the only terror that awaits us out there, if the rumours of the Banô, the evil spirit that haunts this place, are true. So make sure your faces and hands are blackened with ashes, like this …’ he gestured to his own face, striped with the lines left by his soot-laden fingers to break up its pale image, ‘and leave your boots in our camp. We must be as silent as the mouse that hunts in the forest, knowing that the owl lurks above, waiting for a single sound to betray its presence. Now go and prepare.’

  He waited patiently while they made ready for their night’s work, content there was no sign that the heavy clouds that had rolled across the sky late that evening would part to admit the light of the moon and stars any time soon. Turning to contemplate the darkened fortress on which he and thousands of German tribesmen stood guard, its outline barely visible in the gloom, he spat softly into the dirt at his feet, muttering a curse on the Romans who had robbed him of two sons in the three months they had been besieging the stronghold that their enemy called the Old Camp. One had died instantly with a bolt in his chest, the other a slow, lingering death as a result of the horrific scalding inflicted on him by boiling water poured onto the tribe’s warriors as they had flailed furiously but to no avail at the twenty-foot-high brick-faced walls. The circle of heavily battle-scarred grass around the fortress was a killing ground that had claimed thousands of men over the previous months, fallen warriors whose bodies had been left to rot for days before the Romans had finally allowed them to be gathered, painfully slowly by only a small number of men, and granted a suitable farewell. Already he wished he had never set eyes upon it, or heard the names Kivilaz, the Batavi prince who was the leader of the revolt, or Veleda, the priestess who had encouraged his tribe and several others to join it, but he kept such thoughts to himself. As, he suspected, did many other men of his rank, the hundreds of clan leaders who had led their families to this place of death and horror.

  With all attempts at breaking into the Romans’ fortress having failed, and now that the decision had been made to starve the defenders out, with the promise of a grim revenge to be extracted on that day, there was nothing for any of the besiegers to do but wait and take what opportunities for distraction and profit presented themselves. Only a week before a man had slipped back into the camp just before dawn with a gold brooch in his dirty hand, trembling both with the cold and the fear of the terror that was said to haunt the field of bones when darkness fell, but nevertheless undeniably rich. His find had been fit to grace a tribal king’s cloak, heavy enough to buy a farm and cattle, and he had left swiftly, before word got round and attempts were made to claim its return by false and genuine claimants alike. The brooch would by now be on its way to Rome, where, it was said, authentic tribal jewellery was in huge demand. And so, in the absence of any better way of earning some recompense for sons lost and a wife left alone too long, the chieftain had finally decided to risk the various dangers inherent in roaming the battlefield after dark, and had agreed to lead his family in a search of the ground over which so many men had fought and died. His warriors gathered around him again, and after making a few last adjustments to their ashen camouflage, he nodded and turned back to the fortress.

  ‘We go. From now, no sound.’

  Climbing quietly up the timber steps out of the great fortified ditch that ran the full length of the perimeter around the Old Camp, a barrier that Kivilaz had ordered both as a means of keeping the legions inside the camp trapped, and to keep out any relieving force, they padded silently out onto the wide expanse of pitted and ravaged ground, their pace set by the man at the head of their line, the chieftain’s youngest son and his only remaining heir, an irrepressible boy on the cusp of manhood whose eyes and ears were undoubtedly the sharpest among them. Advancing slowly out into the killing field of the fortress’s bolt throwers they barely made a sound, their presence undetectable in the deep gloom of the overcast night.

  A whispered command stopped them, and each man turned to his right and sank silently to the ground, the fortress barely discernible in the night except as a darker mass against the gloom. No lights burned on the walls, the Romans having learned early in the siege that to do so invited the attention of archers, who would creep in close and then loft speculative arrows at any torch or watch fire. The walls could have been empty of life, were it not for the fact that the sound of voices could be faintly heard in the night’s silence, men talking to pass the long hours of their watch. Good, he mused, for if they were talking then they could not be listening. He whispered the order to begin the search, and with an almost imperceptible rustle of fingers combing through frost-rimed grass his men began to crawl fo
rward. Doing the same, his hands feeling forward in the darkness, he inched his way across the freezing cold ground, probing the ice-crusted blades of grass with his fingers for any sign of the prize in whose pursuit he had led his kindred out onto the dark battlefield. His skin touched cold metal, and with a thrill of discovery he slowly and painstakingly freed it from the earth into which it had been trodden, but even as it came free from the ground’s tight grip he knew that it was close to valueless, a piece of iron shield edging that would be worth next to nothing. Tucking it into his belt he crawled on, listening as the men on either side stopped and scraped at the soil as they chanced on items of potential value, only to breathe disappointed sighs as the truth of their discoveries became apparent.

  ‘It’s an arrowhead.’

  His son’s almost inaudible whisper was freighted with the despondency that followed the first thrill of a find, when the potential for wealth was dispelled by the certainty of what it was that lay on the discoverer’s palm. He had, of course, warned them that their search was likely to end in disappointment. The men with the unenviable job carrying away the rotting bodies of their dead fellow warriors after each battle had routinely searched them for valuables, and combed the ground on which they lay, and the vast majority of gold and weapons had doubtless been found and carried away. There would be other groups of men searching the battlefield elsewhere, as there were every moonless night, and previous searches had already seen men come away with items that had evaded the eyes of men struggling with the horror of their gruesome task, but such good fortune was rare, and becoming less and less likely as the weeks passed.

  A faint sound away to his right snatched the tribesman’s attention away from his task, a hand snaking to his dagger, but no other noise broke the silence and, after a moment longer to assure himself that all was still well, he resumed the search, crawling slowly across the cold ground with the increasing feeling of having risked the battlefield’s perils for nothing, not yet willing to admit defeat, despite the fact that he could no longer feel his fingers or toes. Only when he judged that the dawn was approaching did he hiss a quiet command, waiting while it was passed down the line before creeping away from the fortress with his family at his back. Once they had regained the safety of the earthwork he straightened and stood erect, stretching out the knots in his muscles and counting his men as they walked stiffly past him into the besiegers’ camp.