The Leopard Sword: Empire IV (6 page)

The tribune’s gloomy expression lightened a little.

‘Good. That’ll give me something to lighten the mood when I upset the municipal authorities in the morning.’

‘This is simply outrageous, Tribune Scaurus! You have absolutely no right to commandeer private property in this way! I shall be writing to the governor about this, and when I’ve finished he won’t be in any doubt as to the sort of officer with which the authorities in Britannia have saddled Tungrorum. You are rapacious, unprincipled, and no better than the bandits who are bleeding us dry from outside our walls. At least we can keep
them
out! This city is only just getting off its knees after the plague killed a third of its inhabitants, we’re still not taking enough in tax to satisfy the empire’s requirements of my office, and now you march up demanding that a civilian population of seven thousand people should feed nearly two thousand soldiers. All of whom seem to eat like gladiators, if I’m to judge from this supply requirement of yours!
No!
I simply cannot agree to these demands!’

Procurator Albanus scowled across the wide table at Scaurus, his bearded face contorted with righteous anger, and he slapped his hand down on the table with a loud crack before turning away in apparent fury. Scaurus glanced across the table at his colleague Belletor, noting that the other man was unsuccessfully attempting to suppress a smirk. Belletor’s senior centurion, Sergius, was stone-faced alongside his tribune, while the procurator’s clerk was avoiding Scaurus’s eye, his head bent over his tablet as he sat in his place at the procurator’s left hand. On Albanus’s right sat his colleague of the previous evening, a wiry man with a thick mane of dark brown hair, who was wearing a long-sleeved tunic, his face shaved smooth in defiance of the prevailing fashion and his eyes hard stones in a face which seemed to be blessed with a talent for complete immobility of expression. Introduced by Albanus in a perfunctory manner as Petrus, he appeared to be the procurator’s deputy, although he had made no contribution to the discussion, apparently happy to sit and watch as the meeting played out.

The last man at the table had slipped into the room and taken a seat between the two sides of the debate just after Albanus had started his tirade of complaint at Scaurus’s requirements five minutes earlier, and was yet to be introduced. His cloak, discarded over the back of the chair next to him, was flecked with mud, and his damp and muddied leggings bore further witness to his having recently arrived from elsewhere. As he glanced around the table with a questioning look Scaurus noted that one of his green eyes had a slight squint, an effect he found vaguely disconcerting. Shaking his head slightly the tribune got to his feet, the sound of his hobnailed boots muffled by straw matting laid out over the complex mosaic. He reached out a hand to the newcomer.

‘Before I reply to Procurator Albanus I ought to introduce myself. Rutilius Scaurus, Tribune commanding the First and Second Tungrian Cohorts.’

The other man smiled, taking the offered clasp.

‘With passions running so high I doubt anyone will think to introduce me, so I’ll return the favour myself. I’m the governor’s prefect with responsibility for ridding the province of bandits, on detachment from Fortress Bonna. Quintus Caninus.’ He shot a meaningful glance at Albanus, who was looking at him disdainfully. ‘Procurator Albanus has a low enough opinion of me, and I’ve only got thirty men to feed and house, so it’s no wonder he’s got excited at the sight of two more full cohorts inside his walls.’

Albanus snorted his derision.

‘Thirty men I can live with, and even the horses we have to feed and stable. A cohort of legionaries at least provides us with security against the thieves that the army seems unable to control. But two more whole cohorts to feed? And now this . . .
gentleman
. . .
is demanding that we also build barracks for fourteen hundred men! I find myself—’

Scaurus, having picked up his first spear’s vine stick from the table where it rested in front of him, and with a look of apology to Sextus Frontinius, smashed it down onto the flat surface with a terrific bang. He stared hard at the shocked procurator for a long moment of complete silence, ignoring the incensed glances that Belletor was shooting at him.

‘Is that it?’ The procurator goggled at him in silent amazement, while his colleague Petrus stared up at the angry tribune with a look of interest. ‘Good! Thank you, Procurator Albanus, for making your views on the subject so clear. You’ve made a most lyrical defence of your desire not to provide my men with either shelter from the elements or food in their bellies, despite the fact that they’ve been sent to protect
you
and your people from the bandits who have been preying upon them for months. And now I think it’s time we heard from someone other than a
coin counter
! Prefect Caninus, I’d be grateful to hear your views on the subject of exactly what it is that we’re facing.’

Caninus got up from his place at the table, pulling a hanging curtain aside to reveal a detailed map of the area around the city painted onto the wall behind it.

‘Very well, Tribune, this is my assessment of the current position with regard to the bandit threat to this part of the province. First, consider the geography of the area. Tungrorum is here, right in the middle of everything that matters for the province.’ Frontinius frowned, and Caninus raised an eyebrow. ‘You have a question, First Spear?’

Frontinius nodded, pointing at the map with his vine stick.

‘Where I come from, ground is only important if it allows the man that holds it to control something. What makes this place so important?’

Albanus raised his eyes to the ceiling, but Caninus continued, warming to his subject.

‘A good question. What makes this city in the middle of nowhere of any interest to anyone? There’s a simple answer, First Spear. Roads. Look, I’ll show you.’ He pointed to the map. ‘To the west, the road runs across easy ground to Beech Forest, the Nervian capital, and from there down into Gaul. And it runs through miles and miles of fertile soil, fields of grain for as far as the eye can see.’ He indicated a spot on the map to the east of the city. ‘From Tungrorum that same road runs east for a half-day’s march to cross the river at Mosa Ford, and then continues all the way to Claudius Colony on the River Rhenus. From there the road runs along the river’s western bank to all of the major towns and fortresses on the river.’

He stopped speaking and looked at Frontinius, who was studying the map with fresh understanding.

‘So the grain from Gaul is shipped up the road to Tungrorum, then on to the fortresses on the Rhenus?’

‘Exactly, First Spear. The journey’s too long for carters in Gaul to go all the way to the Rhenus, so they bring the grain here to the grain store –’ Albanus snorted again, but the prefect continued speaking without any sign of having heard him – ‘where it can be collected and shipped to the east. Without grain from Gaul the fortresses on the Rhenus would be unsustainable, and without the legions camped on the river the Germans would be across the border and raiding deep into our land in no time.’

‘And without Germania Inferior the whole of Gaul would be wide open. Not to mention the road to Rome.’

Caninus smiled broadly.

‘You’ve a sharp mind, First Spear. As you say, without the supply of grain to the fortresses on the Rhenus, the empire’s entire north-western flank would be wide open to barbarian attack. Within fifty years they’d have settled Germania Inferior and be knocking on the door of Gaul. Not to mention the fact that not defending the lower stretches of the Rhenus would put the defences along the upper reaches of the river under threat of attack. Tungrorum is absolutely critical to the maintenance of control over the German tribes. And Tungrorum is under a threat whose severity Procurator Albanus seems determined to underestimate in favour of commercial concerns.’

He looked directly at the procurator, waiting for him to deny the accusation, but the administrator stared intently at the table, clearly determined to ignore the provocation. Scaurus waved a hand at the wall.

‘Tell us about the bandit threat, Prefect. I’m curious to know why it hasn’t already been stamped out, if the supply route to the frontier is of such critical importance.’

Caninus pointed to the map again, indicating an area to the south and east of the city.

‘March to the east for ten miles and cross the River Mosa, and you’ll find yourself confronted with a vast forest that rises from the river’s edge to form a range of hills. It’s impossible ground to police, riven by deep river valleys and covered with dense woodland where the light of day barely reaches the ground. When it’s not raining the hills are wreathed in mist, and it’s as cold as the grave at this time of the year. And that is the root of our problem, Tribune. The locals call it the Forest of Arduenna, after their goddess of the high woods. She rides a boar to hunt, they say.’

‘A German Diana, then?’

‘Yes, Tribune, apart from her association with high ground. The forest is littered with shrines to her name, hunters invoking her good favour in the main, although there are rumours of a darker side to her worship. Human sacrifices . . .’ He paused, touching an amulet that hung from his right wrist. ‘Not that we’ve found any sign of the kind of sacrificial altars you’d expect if the rumours are based in fact, but . . .’

Scaurus nodded, his face set hard.

‘When we had men captured in the war with the Quadi it wasn’t unusual for the tribesmen to sacrifice them to their gods, usually slowly, and often within screaming distance of our camps. Let’s hope your amulet brings you protection. So, tell me, what have you achieved against these bandits?’

Albanus jumped to his feet, suddenly livid at the question.

‘Nothing! Exactly nothing at all! We house these men at the governor’s request, we provide them with stabling, and yet—’

‘
Procurator!
’ Scaurus’s voice was cold, and his tone not that of a man likely to brook any argument. The civilian looked at him, his mouth open. ‘I promise you, in fact I swear to Mithras Unconquered, that if you interject your nonsensical gabbling into this conference one more time I will have you ejected from the room. Keep your mouth shut, so that those of us who have to go
outside
these walls and hunt down the men putting the empire’s entire northern frontier at risk can work out what is to be done!’ He held the administrator’s gaze until the other man looked away, while his clerk stared with even greater intensity at his notes. Petrus, the first spear noted, didn’t so much as flicker an eyelid; he simply watched Scaurus with the same closed expression. The tribune waited another moment to make sure his point had been made, then gestured to the waiting Caninus. ‘Prefect? Do please continue.’

Caninus looked at the map in silence for a moment, shaking his head ruefully.

‘You want to know what we’ve done? Everything we can, given our resources, but nowhere near enough. We patrol the roads as frequently as we can, capturing and killing the occasional small band of robbers, but the real threat is still out there. And why, you ask? Why haven’t we already ground them into the mud of the flat open fields that border the road for as far as the eye can see? There are two reasons, and if I have your measure you already know very well what the bigger of the two has to be.’

Scaurus nodded.

‘I think I know the first of them as well, but please continue.’

‘The first is simple enough. All the way through the war with the Marcomanni and the Quadi, a war which only really ended two years ago, no matter what the victory coins might have said before that, this province was bled of men and gold to fund the campaign’s insatiable appetite for blood and treasure. The legions on the lower Rhenus are stripped to the bone, capable of little more than guarding the frontier; and the farm owners are taxed to the hilt to make up the financial shortfall caused by the plague, so they drive their slaves like animals. As a consequence of these problems the number of army deserters and escaped slaves swells the numbers of those committing the crime of robbery faster than I can bring them to justice with only thirty men. As you expected, Tribune?’ Scaurus nodded, his expression thoughtful. ‘And your guess as to the second problem?’

The tribune stood, stretching his back before walking across to the map. As he stared intently at it a tense silence filled the room, broken by the slap of his hand on the wall.

‘Simple. You have two different types of bandit at work here. There are opportunists like those we killed yesterday, escaped slaves for the most part, running from the harsh conditions imposed on them by their masters, who are, as you say, desperate to make a profit despite the heavy taxes squeezing them dry. After all, most of them owe money, and the lenders aren’t traditionally known for their patience. This first type of bandit stays close to the road, and preys on the weak and unprepared, but keeps well away from the grain convoys. You are escorting the grain across the province?’

‘Yes. We meet the convoys twenty or so miles to the west and escort them to the city. The convoys from here to the legions on the Rhenus we accompany as far as the Mosa to the east. It’s the most that we can do with the strength we have, and the carters are sufficiently well armed to fight off most of the smaller bands of robbers.’

‘But here –’ Scaurus slapped the wall again, indicating the forest’s sprawling mass – ‘here’s your bigger problem. The forest is less than a day’s march from the road, and provides a sanctuary that you’ll never be able to penetrate. There’s a major band operating from the forest, at a guess?’

Caninus laughed ruefully.

‘More like an army. There were already at least two hundred of them before the auxiliaries sent to hunt them down decided to mutiny and join with them last autumn. A century sent to man an outpost fort on the road south was attacked after dark and those that decided to resist were slaughtered to the last man. When their bodies were discovered, the rest of the cohort decided they’d be better off siding with the bandits. They killed their prefect and deserted, and it was only by good fortune they weren’t actually in the city when it happened or there would have been a bloodbath. The band in the forest must be at least five hundred men strong now, and that many mouths take a lot of feeding.’