Chapter IV
“I love the name of honour, more than I fear death.” - Julius Caesar
Arising before dawn is never pleasant. In the army, in a camp and from an uncomfortable night on straw palettes, it is soul-destroying. Neither of us spoke as we donned our armour. We fumbled around for our gear in the darkness of the tent in a half-awake state and emerged, fully equipped for a fight, but we hardly expected there to be one, for we knew the General was a man who would have thought of everything.
There was no time for food or any other preparation apart from emptying our bladders and swigging some water from our water bottles. Of course, we could have got the time wrong. We were certain that it was near dawn but it could have been earlier, we had no way of knowing. We made our way to the Via Praetoria and the General's tent.
The roadway between the tents was empty. The camp could almost have been deserted, had it not been for the sound of gentle snoring from tents as we passed. There was a clear space in front of the General's tent where the men could form up for muster, but it was, like the rest of the camp, empty of men. As we approached the command tent, an Orderly emerged. He looked at us and said, 'Well?'
'What do you mean "well"?' I said, not feeling particularly like explaining myself at that time of day.
'Who the bloody Styx are you? Is what I mean.' he said, his tone impatient.
'I am Decurion Aulus Veridius Scapula and this is Decurion Junius Sinna. We are here at the General's request.'
'No one tells me anything,' he mumbled irritably, 'wait there.'
We waited long minutes for the Orderly to emerge again and lift the flap for us to enter.
The General was at his desk. My mind was playing games with me for I wondered obliquely whether he had been there immobile all night, but I knew he had not. The remains of his breakfast were on the table before him and as we entered, the Orderly hurried to the desk to remove it. I vaguely thought that we were always interrupting his breakfast.
'All right you two, I want you both behind me. I will sit here and the officers of the Lucullan will walk in through the opening in the tent. I will address them and you will watch them carefully. Can you draw your swords quickly?'
'Of course we can sir,' I said.
'Show me.'
We drew our blades in the way that I had learned from Meridius and I had taught Junius. The blade moves out of the scabbard and strikes in one movement with a cutting strike not as a cudgel. I could almost hear Meridius saying it, as I drew my weapon. Junius at my side was only marginally slower and the General seemed satisfied.
'Not bad. I see Meridius taught you well. Watch their eyes. Don't move ahead of time and don't kill anyone if there is no trouble. Mostly these things go off with no bloodshed but I need you near me if they try to kill me. Is that clear?'
'Clear as spring water, sir,' Junius said.
We waited in silence and the General peered at some scrolls in front of him without speaking. We could have been furniture for all the attention he paid us. The thought that anyone in our own army might want to kill Lucullus seemed strange to me. I supposed that he was right and that whatever was going to go on, would most likely be achieved without violence.
The waiting was soon over. Ten of the officers of the Lucullan legion arrived two or three at a time. Judging by their faces, they were not in a happy mood. Some were actively scowling and the others were silent as they entered. I recognised none of them.
There were four tribunes, the prefect and a number of senior Centurions. They were all armed similarly to us. The tent was large enough for each man to stand with his arms outstretched and not touch another so I estimated that if it came to a fight there was enough space to move.
'Gentlemen,' Lucullus said, 'you will be wondering why I have sent for you.'
Silence. One of the tribunes, shifted uncomfortably, but said nothing.
'Well it's a bit of good news!'
Still silence.
'Severus! Have you nothing to say? I have never known you as silent as this! Don't you remember the time when we organised those chariot races in Ephesus? You had plenty to say then.'
'This is a different time, General. It is a different place too,' Severus said, a man of medium height and a broad outline, the prefect of the Lucullan legion. He carried himself as a fighting man, squarely on his feet and a hand always close to his sword.
'Yes, you are right. Please sit down, if there are not enough seats my Orderly will bring more. I asked you here to discuss sensibly, what we are doing here. Frankly, I have heard some disturbing rumours about morale in the legion. I hoped you could enlighten me.'
The assembled men looked at each other. A tall broad Tribune approached the desk and looked Lucullus in the eye. His face was angry and although hidden by a dense black beard it betrayed his feelings as clearly as the moans of a dying man. His name was Barbatus.
'Look General, we have been talking.'
'Talking?' Lucullus said.
'Yes sir. We aren't happy about this war. The Senate we've heard are not behind you in this and most of our legion is made up of men who have served you long and well. They deserve to be able to retire as is their right, at the end of their term.'
'We? Who is "we"?'
'The men of the Lucullan sir.'
There was a murmur of agreement in the background. The General and the Tribune stared into each other's eyes in silence. A silence broken suddenly by Lucullus. He slammed the desk in front of him with his fist and raised his voice.
'You are not happy? Happy! Since when does a soldier demand to be happy to do his duty! Answer me! When?'
'It's true. The men want their due,' Barbatus said.
'I'll give them their due. I'll have them decimated at the first sound of dissent or sedition. Don't forget who pays your wages. I command this army and I decide where we go and when. This is not a meeting of the Senate. There is no voting here. I call the tune. I decide and you follow.'
Severus stepped forward again.
'General, you don't understand. No one wants to disobey orders. We just want you to listen to us. We want to go home.'
'We will fight the Armenians. They have sheltered an enemy of Rome. It is our duty to punish them and to take plunder from these enemies, who flaunt the will of our great city! If you cannot cope with military discipline then maybe you will have to learn.'
'General. If you oppose us there may be consequences,' Barbatus said.
'Are you threatening me?'
'If that is how you want to interpret it, yes.'
'I could have you all crucified for sedition and no one would argue with me. I am, however, a reasonable man and I don't want you to die. Jupiter himself knows how we have striven together to take Pontus, but you will obey me. Is that clear?'
Procillus entered the tent. It was not a good time to interrupt and both Lucullus and Barbatus, who had to turn around, glared at my commander.
'Sorry about this sir. I am late. Have I missed much?' he grinned in a disarming way.
Mouths opened but no one spoke as they watched Procillus walk slowly and apparently unconcerned to stand by my side. He looked me in the eye and there was a seriousness there I had never seen before in the young officer. Strangely, the interruption seemed to take a lot of the heat out of the rising tempers.
'Look men,' Lucullus said, ' We need to resolve this issue once and for all. Either you all agree to follow my command or you will be punished. I can make it no clearer than that.'
'May we confer sir?' Severus said.
'Of course,' the General said, with a wave of his hand.
The ten men turned and went to the far end of the command tent. They stood in a circle and spoke in low voices so that only occasional words could be heard.
They all turned at the same time and approached the General's desk. Barbatus spoke as if they had elected him spokesman.
'General, this is going nowhere. You show no spirit of compromise and all you do is give us ord
ers, even now when we have asked you to reconsider what we think is a foolish plan. You leave us no choice.'
Lucullus had told us to watch their eyes. There is something about a man's eyes that tells you what he is going to do. I put my hand to my sword hilt in readiness.
Lucullus merely looked Barbatus in the eye. He stared hard and the Tribune looked away.
'There will be no violence. There will be no disobedience on the battlefield. I will have you all court martialed for mutiny unless I have your assurance that you will obey me!'
'We cannot do that sir,' Severus said, 'our men who we represent, need to go home. We owe it to them.'
With a quick movement, he drew his sword and it was clearly a signal for the others to do the same. I had counted the odds. There were four of us against ten of them and they were fighting-men like us.
Lucullus surprised me then. With a speed to rival my own, he threw the table forwards and it fell like a barrier between him and the nearest attacker. The mutineers had all drawn their weapons and I realised that there was only a slim chance we could kill them all.
Swords drawn, we stepped forward. Steel rang on steel. Lucullus stood at my side. I fended off a blow to my head and struck back. It was chaos. The interior of the tent became a turmoil of swords, arms and legs. I hit one man with my left fist and stabbed another with my sword. Junius seemed in his element. His large figure seemed to dominate. His sword flashed in the lamplight. He screamed abuse at his attackers. He punched, he kicked and he stabbed with his blade like a madman.
The lack of space limited the attackers, for they could not reach us easily across the fallen table. One man fell forward across the table, pushed from behind. I stabbed him in the neck and forgot him. I used my sword to defend Lucullus and myself. He fought too, like a fury next to me.
The fight lasted only seconds for the central tent pole collapsed suddenly, something hit me on the head and all went dark for a few moments. When I recovered, I was floundering with the weight of the leather tent pressing me flat against a dead man. I had trouble breathing.
After what seemed an interminably long time, a hand raised the edge of the tent. I looked up to find Calvus smiling down at me.
'Sorry about that Decurion. It was the only way to stop the fight before they killed you all.'
'We weren't doing so badly,' I said.
'Maybe not, there are three of them dead and one badly wounded. Are you hurt?'
'No, just my head, sir. What about the General and the others?' I was on all fours, struggling to get up.
'They're over there,' he said helping me to regain my feet to my huge embarrassment.
My fellow fighters were standing ten yards away, still holding their swords and staring fixedly at their attackers who were ringed by members of our cohort. There was blood on my hand and I wiped it on my tunic as I joined them. I must have been at the far end of the collapsed tent for they turned and Lucullus said, 'Thought we had lost you! Glad you made it. Any injuries?'
'No sir, just my pride.'
'You and Sinna have acquitted yourselves well lad. We would never have survived if Procillus hadn't had the idea to have half a century waiting outside the tent, but it was Calvus who made it happen when he collapsed the tent. They picked up the mutineers as they emerged. A neat job!'
There was a bump the size of a hen's egg on the back of my head and my neck was stiff. The dizziness passed off after only a few minutes, but for the rest of the day I had double vision intermittently and a terrible headache.
Lucullus looked at the conspirators. He said nothing and I assumed he was disgusted with them. Presently he approached Severus who was lying on the ground, a wound seeping blood from his chest.
'It wasn't worth it Severus. To die like a dog in this brawl. Why?'
'Like the lads, I have family and a place to go home to. I was ready to go when you announced the Armenian war. I would have gone to that war too, but I couldn't face the prospect of staying longer,' he coughed and bright red stained his lips, 'it just wasn't fair!'
'No one said life was fair, Severus.'
'No,' he coughed again weakly, 'Am I dying General?'
'Yes, but all your things will be sent home and I won't record today's events in your discharge sheet.'
It was too late. Severus heard nothing. He had stopped breathing. Lucullus looked up at me. His eyes seemed perturbed.
'He served me in the legions even before the Lucullan was formed. I knew him for eighteen years and had thought of him as a friend. What makes a man turn like that?'
'I don't know General,' was all I could think to say.
'Calvus! Have these men crucified. I want the entire army to march past them when we leave this morning. Use proper nails this time, I don’t want them tied to the crosses like the last lot; it took them days to die. Oh, and pop a coin in Severus' mouth for me - old times' sake you know.'
Lucullus looked at me. I think he wanted reassurance but there was nothing I could say to a General who had ordered his own men crucified. I was only a Decurion. There was no new bond of friendship either, between such a man and I, even if we had fought together and I knew it. The soft tone he had used with the dying Severus was clearly only a mantle, for the man beneath was seemingly made of stone.
I noticed my stomach rumbling. I turned to leave. It occurred to me that I had not eaten yet that day. I walked through the camp, my head aching. I had a strange feeling that I might have been on the wrong side in that tent. Lucullus had ordered the deaths of all those men, men he had brought to Pontus and Armenia, men he had fought with, lived with. A single command and he had condemned them all to a painful slow death. It could have been me having the nails driven into my arms, begging for a quick death only for a bit of luck.
Lucullus was everything his reputation heralded. He was hard, driven and cruel but the contradictions engendered by his treatment of the Primum Pila, Severus, seemed the strangest thing of all. Lucullus appeared more complex than any I had yet met in the legions. I did not know what to make of him. The look in his eye when he had looked at me was a cold one, yet he had not seemed as emotionless as he had acted. Perhaps that was what separated him from the rest of us. A general cannot afford to allow sentiment to obscure the necessities of command and I was beginning to understand now what the pressures of command could do to a man.