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  ‘Twelve. There is one missing. Come here!’ He looked at each of them in turn in the dim light of the torch that lit that section of the earthworks, quickly realising who was absent. ‘My son. Where is my son?’

  They looked at each other in growing horror, all having heard the stories told by men whose narrow escapes from death in the darkness had usually been purchased with the lives or, more chillingly, the ruin of their comrades or family members – men who had professed, with wide eyes, their hands raised to protest the truth of their words, that they had never heard or seen a sign of the Banô, of whoever it was who had killed or mutilated the man barely feet from them, the terror that was said to roam the night in search of blood, and the opportunity to inflict a lifetime of misery on his victims. Turning back to the battlefield, forbidding any of them to accompany him, he retraced his steps with less care than before, heedless of the danger that he might be heard in his increasingly desperate need to find his son before the sun rose, and revealed whatever had befallen him, praying that the boy had simply got lost in the dark and made his own way back across the fortified earth defence. Out on the field of bones the fortress’s dark shape loomed a little larger, its outline fractionally clearer against the slowly lightening eastern sky, and he knew he only had a short time before the ground around him began to receive a portion of the impending dawn’s feeble glow despite the Old Camp’s brooding presence. Scouting across the bumpy, pockmarked surface, he cast frantically to his left and right, moving in an aimless hunt no less likely to reveal his son than a carefully thought out search. And then, just as he knew he would have to give up the hunt, he tripped, sprawling full length onto the hard ground with the breath driven out of him by the unexpected impact in a loud grunt that caught the attention of the wall sentries, who called excitedly to each other at the prospect of something to break their monotonous routine. Hobnailed boots were slapping at the stairs as the Romans ran for their arrow machines, but the chieftain’s attention was riveted to the corpse over which he had fallen, lifting the dead man’s head with the dread of certainty. He choked with the horror of his son’s lifeless eyes, and the gash that had been torn in his throat to allow his lifeblood to soak the ground on which he lay in a slick of fluid made black by the absence of light. Shuffling backwards, away from the boy’s cold body, desperate to escape the corpse’s accusatory stare, he felt a hard grasp pinion the back of his neck, fingers clamping so tightly that he instinctively knew his chances of escape were infinitesimal, even before the point of a knife slid under his jaw to rest on the soft skin beneath which his veins awaited its cold iron kiss.

  ‘You wish to live? Or die? Quietly.’

  The words were spoken in fluent Latin, a language the German had learned a little of in his youth living in a village close to the great river, the voice brutally harsh even as a whisper, leaving him in no doubt that he was closer to death than he had ever been fighting under the defenders’ spears and missiles.

  ‘I wish to l-live.’

  ‘Then I will let you live. In return you will wear my mark for the rest of your life. Do you agree?’

  He nodded minutely, knowing that the smallest movement of the knife’s blade could kill him, but his relief as the iron’s cold touch left the skin of his throat was replaced by horror as he was pushed effortlessly back onto the frozen grass, a dark shape looming over him with one big hand covering his mouth and holding him down with a force he could never have hoped to resist. Looking up into the featureless face that loomed over him he saw the faint reflections of his captor’s eyes, pitiless and without expression, a gaze that fixed him in place as effortlessly as the hand on his face. His knife was within easy reach of his right hand, and the man pinning him to the frozen earth was making no effort to prevent him trying to take it, but he knew without conscious thought that to do so would be to die before the blade had cleared its sheath.

  ‘This will hurt. If you make a sound I will kill you. Understand?’

  The German nodded, starting as the blade’s point was suddenly touching his face, then stiffening with the first cut, feeling the iron scraping across the bone of his forehead in a line that curved down from one temple to the bridge of his nose and then up again on the other side of his head, red hot pain tensing his body as the knife descended again to peck at his face in a pattern that repeated half a dozen times above his right eye before the weapon’s point was momentarily withdrawn.

  ‘Nearly finished. But you can still die here.’

  The blade came down again, repeating the same odd series of short cuts over the other eye, then withdrew.

  ‘Done. When men ask you what it is, tell them it is the mark of the eagle. Tell them that’s what happens when you pull Rome’s tail just a little too hard without working out that the dog you’re teasing still has teeth. Now leave in silence, without drawing attention to me, or I’ll run you down in a dozen strides and leave the rope of your guts hanging out for the crows.’

  Padding silently away with blood pouring down his face from a dozen deep cuts to his forehead, the German was almost back at the earthwork, the shock of his disfigurement swiftly being overridden by the memory of his dead son’s corpse staring up into the blank sky, when the silence was broken by a sudden roar.

  ‘This! Is! Aquillius!’ Silence descended again, no answer call given, or, from the speed with which the Roman renewed his challenge, expected. ‘Let down the rope and get ready to pull me up! And if I find out that any one of you so much as puts bolt to bow while I’m down here, I’ll put that missile up your arse fins first!’

  1

  Egypt, January AD 70

  ‘Gaius Hosidius Geta! At last, a man I can talk to without bothering about protocol!’

  Beaming with pleasure, the newly enthroned emperor Vespasianus greeted his visitor with the evident warmth of a military man for a former brother-in-arms, gesturing to the couches that had been set up for their meeting along with wine and an assortment of morsels should either Caesar or his guest find themselves in need of refreshment. Taking a cup poured for him by the emperor, Vespasianus’s invited guest lowered his head solemnly in the universal gesture of respect. A man in his late middle age, he retained the razor-sharp intelligence that had characterised him as a legion commander over twenty-five years before, and which was one of the reasons the emperor had sent for him, summoning his old friend across the sea to Alexandria where the imperial court awaited favourable winds for the voyage to Rome.

  ‘Caesar. Allow me to present the compliments of my senatorial colleagues. Those men not selected to join the official delegation you met earlier, after a selection process that exercised the best minds in Rome for days with the arcane methods by which the undeserving, uninspiring and those men known to have favoured Nero, Otho or Vitellius were excluded.’

  Vespasianus barked a gruff laugh.

  ‘Hah! I’d imagine Licinius Mucianus had a field day with that nonsense, it’s just the sort of thing he’s good at, smiling while he slides the knife in. Not like you and I, Gaius? The darker political arts don’t come easily to soldiers like us!’

  Hosidius Geta inclined his head with a slight smile.

  ‘Indeed not, Caesar, you and—’

  ‘And you can cut out all that imperial fawning! You and I are Gaius and Titus, fellow legates who both very nearly bought our farms one misty morning on a hill in Britannia, eh?’

  Geta stared at the older man for a moment, the niceties of dealing with an emperor falling away at the older man’s command.

  ‘Indeed we did. And, of course, when your colleague Mucianus summoned me to the Palatine, I guessed at once what it was that he would request of me, given our shared near-death experience.’

  Vespasianus laughed again.

  ‘Did you now? You always were a smart arse, weren’t you? You pulled off the near-impossible in Africa by defeating the Mauri at twenty-three, and you were victorious in Britannia against all the odds at twenty-four, so gloriously victorious and at such gr
eat personal risk that dear old Claudius made you walk with him through Rome on the day of his triumph to celebrate the conquest of the new province, even though you weren’t a consul. And then?’

  Geta winced.

  ‘And then, Titus, I was reclaimed by my family. Glory won, honour more than satisfied, I was to run the family estates and allow my father a well-deserved retirement. Retirement from public life with a pretty wife chosen for me, not that they got that choice wrong in any way, but with that feeling that as a man of less than thirty I could have done more. So much more.’

  The emperor smiled wryly.

  ‘Such hardship! Whereas, with a legion centurion for a grandfather rather than a pillar of an old and well-respected family, I never had any alternative but to serve, or to trade mules when times were thin …’ The two men exchanged smiles at his recounting of a story that had long since passed into legend. ‘Mulio, they called me. They won’t dare do that again, will they!’

  Geta laughed.

  ‘No, they surely won’t.’

  The emperor was suddenly serious, tipping his head to one side in question.

  ‘So come on then, Gaius, if you’re so clever, tell me what it is I want with you?’

  The younger man smiled slyly.

  ‘The empire is still …’

  ‘Shaken?’

  ‘I was going to say “unsteady”, but shaken will serve as well. Your son Titus will see to the Jews, that’s obvious. He’ll make a fine emperor when the time comes.’

  Vespasianus grunted.

  ‘Not too bloody soon, I hope. There’s a good deal of life left to be enjoyed! But yes, he will, and yes, he’ll put the Jews back in their place with the minimum of fuss. But these Batavians …’

  ‘Exactly.’ Geta nodded knowingly. ‘You don’t need a general, not with your son-in-law Petillius Cerialis breathing fire to be sent north, and you wouldn’t have brought me all this way to appoint me commander of an army even if I were qualified for the task. But perhaps you need … counsel? The advice of a man who knows … shall we say the individual concerned?’

  The emperor nodded.

  ‘I thought you’d understand. So, tell me, why you? What special qualities do you possess that I couldn’t find in any other man of our class?’

  ‘That’s easy enough to make out. It’s my knowledge of the events of that morning we both almost died in Britannia. My memories.’

  Vespasianus nodded.

  ‘Yes, your memories. I’m becoming an old man, Gaius, and old men sometimes find themselves with a recollection of distant events that is less precise than might be desirable. I need you to remind us both exactly what happened that day, and then I need to ask you to help me answer a question that’s been troubling me for a while now.’

  ‘Ever since the revolt of the Batavians got somewhat … out of hand? I take it that the rumours that you incited our mutual friend to lead his tribe to war, so as to tie down the army of Germania and deny Vitellius the support of his own legions, are correct?’

  ‘Yes. I had my son-in-law Petillius Cerialis and his friend Secundus Plinius woo Julius Civilis, Kivilaz among his own people, with exactly that intention. With the somewhat over-enthusiastic assistance of that poor fool Hordeonius Flaccus.’

  ‘You’ve heard the stories of Legatus Augusti Flaccus’s death then?’

  ‘Yes. It seems he put his head into the lion’s mouth one time too many, and his German legions obliged their commander’s apparent death-wish in the bloodiest manner possible. And yes, partially thanks to Flaccus and partially our own miscalculation, I suppose, the Batavians are running amok across Germania Inferior. And the war threatens to spread south and consume the Gauls as well. Peace will be restored, of course, at some further cost in dead legionaries, and when that state of calm has been achieved, if our former ally Gaius Julius Civilis survives the pacification, we’ll have to be clear what should be done with him. So, Gaius, remind me of what happened that day in Britannia.’

  Geta leaned back on his couch and sipped from his glass.

  ‘The battle of the Medui river. What a disaster that could have been.’

  Vespasianus snorted.

  ‘Could have been? What a disaster that very nearly was! And you’re not the man who spent the most uncomfortable night imaginable waiting for the enemy to come down that hill one hundred thousand strong and erase any trace that we’d ever even been there!’

  The younger man inclined his head, accepting his emperor’s acerbic rejoinder.

  ‘Yes. And then, the morning after, came that moment when the fate of an entire army rested on one tribe. On one man, it’s probably fair to say. “Our” rebel Civilis.’

  The emperor stared at him, his expression suddenly rapt as the younger man’s words brought memories of the most desperate moment of his military career.

  ‘Two men.’

  ‘Yes. Your memory is as sharp as ever, Titus. I’d totally forgotten Prefect Draco’s part in the matter.’

  A slave approached bearing a platter of delicacies, laying it between the two men as he had been directed, and then backed away, never once having made eye contact with either of them.

  ‘Ah, these are good.’ Vespasianus pointed to a cluster of pastries. ‘I taught the cooks here how to make them, to my mother’s recipe. Try one.’

  Geta bit into the proffered delicacy and tasted black pudding, a heavy scent filling his nostrils as the warm filling was exposed. The smell was redolent with the iron-rich scent of blood, and just for an instant he was standing on a corpse-strewn hillside with a hundred thousand enemy warriors baying for his head.

  ‘We’re cut off!’

  Geta looked about him calmly, swiftly assessing the truth of his first spear’s words. The legion’s first cohort was embattled on all sides, his legionaries fighting with the desperate ferocity of men who realised that their only hope of salvation from the massed barbarians pressing in on them from all sides was their own strength and determination.

  ‘The eagle! They’re trying to capture my legion’s eagle!’

  His first spear nodded.

  ‘They are! That, and your head. Legatus! The rest of us will be left to rot, but your life’s journey will not end here!’

  The perimeter around them was gradually but visibly shrinking, as wild-eyed tribesmen tore into his soldiers on all sides, their ferocity redoubled at the sight of the hated symbol of Rome’s power almost within their reach. The Fourteenth’s other cohorts were battling to either side of the isolated body of men, but the sheer strength of numbers being hurled down the hill and into their ranks at the enemy king’s command was driving them back, step by laboured step, leaving their first cohort ever more deeply mired in the sea of their enemies. A sword rose and fell only a dozen paces from where he stood, and an iron helmet was smashed from view, the blade’s victorious wielder staggering back as the fallen legionary’s comrades took swift and bloody revenge, but in an instant another man was in the gap formed by his sacrifice, and fighting as if he had nothing left to live for. Geta drew his sword, looking down at its gleaming length of razor-sharp iron.

  ‘I’ll take more than one of them with me.’

  His signifer grinned broadly at the sentiment, his sword already in one hand while the other held his eagle proudly aloft, exuding the sort of grace under pressure that, Geta supposed, was the usual reason for selection to the most honoured position in any legion.

  ‘That’s the spirit, Legatus! I’m planning on killing half a dozen of them before they prise my fingers off this standard!’

  His legionaries were being crushed into an ever-constricting space by the sheer press of the enemy, the barbarians deliberately pushing into their shields and forcing them back against the men behind them, and the rate at which they were dying was getting faster, as fresh enemy warriors pressed forward to throw themselves at soldiers who were already exhausted.

  ‘Not long now! This is where all those hours spent knocking the shit out of a wooden post wi
th a wooden sword might suddenly prove to have been of some value!’

  Geta grinned at his first spear’s unfailing bullishness, even in the face of almost certain death, and offered the senior centurion his right hand.

  ‘It’s been a pleasure fighting with you, Sextus!’

  ‘Likewise, Legatus! Perhaps we’ll meet in the Underworld!’

  Geta nodded, hefting the sword as the enemy warriors hacked their way into the line of men only two ranks from where he stood next to the eagle.

  ‘Here! You’re going to need this!’

  The first spear was offering him a shield, but the younger man shook his head with a grin, shouting back over the battle’s unrelenting angry roar.

  ‘I’ll be better without it, thank you, First Spear! It’s not as if I’ve spent any time familiarising myself with the thing’s use!’

  Something caught his eye down the hill’s slope, some sort of disturbance within the ranks of the enemy, but as he craned his neck to see what it was the man in front of him was suddenly under attack by a quick-handed swordsman clearly intent on the prize behind him. Geta waited, calculated, chose his moment and struck, driving his sword over the soldier’s shoulder and deep into the Briton’s chest, sending the dying warrior staggering back into the mass of men behind him with blood spurting across legionary and legatus.

  ‘Good work, Leg—’

  The soldier’s praise was cut off before it could be voiced by a spear thrust into his throat from the baying press of men railing at the Romans’ shields, and with a bubbling groan of agony he was gone, leaving Geta facing the horde with no more protection than his sword. A soldier stepped into the gap in the line from behind him, got a single stab of his gladius into the enemy and then fell, run through by a spear blade thrust with enough force to punch through a joint in his armour and sink deep into his body, grunting in pain as he sank to his knees. Geta snatched up his shield, realising that without it he was open to the enemy’s long spear blades, raising the layered wooden board just in time to deflect a pair of strikes that rocked him back on his heels into the men behind him. A swift glance around him revealed that the fight had reached an end, or all but as good as, with less than fifty legionaries remaining within the circle around the Fourteenth’s eagle, his attention returning to the men in front of him barely in time to punch the shield into their assault and momentarily avert the deadly threat of their swords and spears. Gathering themselves to pounce, all eyes fixed on the legion commander’s richly plumed helmet and shining breastplate, the Britons suddenly found themselves beset from the rear by a wedge of men driving forward into them with scored and battered shields, their swords running red with the blood of tribal warriors who had failed to flee from their implacable advance. Two men formed the point of their formation, one the prefect commanding their cohorts, the other a centurion not known to Geta, both men’s faces and bodies blasted black with the dried blood of their fallen enemies.