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Synopsis
The late second century AD. Once more the Roman Empire has been torn apart by a war of imperial succession. Following the Year of the Five Emperors, three are left in the field. A final bloody confrontation between two of them is inevitable as the ruthless Septimius Severus advances through Cappadocia and Cilicia on the heels of the retreating legions of the Emperor in the East, Percennius Niger.
Co-opted into Severus's legions are two veterans who had, after long service, longed for peace. Gauis Rutilius Scaurus, restored to legion commander and his client, the Tribune Marcus Laticlavius Aquila. Unknown to all but a few, Marcus is an Emperor killer. Perhaps this fate beckons him again.
As Niger retreats towards the impregnable fortress of Antioch, thus threatening to extend the conflict for years, it falls to these two men to plan a series of daring raids to delay the enemy.
But it is not long before they are cornered on a climactic field of blood where one or other of the Imperial pretenders must be annihilated.
Release date: February 12, 2026
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Print pages: 320
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Empire XV: Field of Blood
Anthony Riches
Acknowledgements
In thanking people for getting this story published, the fifteenth in the series, I need to go back and say thank you to someone who was very special to me over the lifespan of the previous fourteen, although I wasn’t to realise quite how much until early last year.
My wonderful editor Carolyn Caughey died soon after Clash of Legions went to press, leaving the entire publishing community stunned at both the suddenness of her passing and the fortitude with which she bore her last days. I was just a little broken to discover that her final editorial comments to me were written after her diagnosis, at a time when she was really quite seriously unwell, but with no hint of her illness whatsoever. While only having known and worked with her for about eighteen years – obviously some former colleagues will have known her for most of their adult lives – she was a joy to collaborate with and I remember her with great fondness and a continuing sense that there is a hole in my life where someone quite unique used to be. I wish that I could have said goodbye – probably a common sentiment across the publishing industry – but I suspect that Carolyn wanted to be remembered as she was in her prime, a kind and razor sharp professional whose memory I treasure as the person who gave me my break and nurtured the series through more books than I thought possible. Rest in peace, Carolyn.
After which I must of course say thank you to the people who made this book happen. My agent Sara O’Keeffe, my editor Oliver Johnson and editorial assistant Jake Carr, and all of the behind the scenes people whose names never figure in these thank yous but who play a big part in turning an author’s output into something readable. And, of course, my wife of forty years now, Helen, who continues to both crack the whip when needed and tolerate sudden ‘growth spurts’ in the books which lead to vacant stares and long thoughtful silences, as characters do their thing and push their way onto the page.
Thanks everyone, we all know it wouldn’t have happened without you.
Prologue
The city of Antioch, in the province of Syria, 26th February AD 194
The look on Gaius Pescennius Niger’s face as he walked into the audience chamber told his commanding general all he needed to know about the emperor’s mood. And if Publius Ampius Marius had been minded to any sort of encouraging thought of how much worse their position might have been with which to open the day’s commander conference, he quickly put any thought to one side. The meeting was, he was quite sure from his master’s demeanour, likely to be a difficult discussion.
‘Gentlemen!’ Niger dropped onto his throne with the look of a man not much in the mood for encouragement, looking up at his legatus Augustus expectantly. ‘Well then, Publius, what is it that caused you to request my presence at this conference? You usually manage to discuss our readiness to renew the fight with the usurper without my presence, so what is it that demanded I cut my morning bath short?’
‘Imperator.’ Marius bowed, careful to walk the fine line between the correct degree of respect and the sort of grovelling obeisance that his rival for the throne, Septimius Severus, was known to demand from his followers. ‘We have news from Cappadocia. A rider arrived two hours ago.’
Niger looked around the table at his generals and advisors.
‘And not good news, to judge from your carefully composed expressions. So just how bad is it? Speak frankly, Legatus; history rarely awards plaudits to commanders who deceive themselves or the comrades at times like these.’
To be fair, the legatus reflected, even a man as willing to deceive himself as to his prospects as Pescennius Niger, now the less well favoured of the empire’s two rulers – perhaps three, if one counted Clodius Albinus, currently bottled up in distant Britannia – must realise that the end of his imperial adventure was, if not near, certainly beckoning from the horizon. He opened his mouth to voice his opinion, but the emperor was still speaking, and in a sombrely reflective mood.
‘Perhaps we are not meant to win this war, gentlemen.’ His generals looked at each other, knowing from experience of their master’s moods what was likely to follow. ‘We were gifted with the most favourable starting position of any of the potential contenders for Didius Julianus’s stolen throne, with nine legions behind us and with total control of Rome’s food supply through our possession of the port of Alexandria. Much like that from which Vespasianus took the empire a century ago, and a position from which victory seemed assured. And yet . . .’
Indeed, Marius mused. And yet. In the space of a few weeks, while they had still been mustering their legions from across the Asian half of the empire to march on Rome, his master’s senatorial colleague, Septimius Severus, had used his power base on the Danube to gain the loyalty of every legion commander in Europa. Moving swiftly to take the city he had declared himself emperor, proclaiming his open rivalry to Niger’s rule while terrorising the senate into quiescence by the shocking departure from convention of allowing his army to walk the city’s streets fully armed. And where Vespasianus had indeed won the throne vacated by Nero a century before from much the same starting position as Niger had found himself in – sending his generals across the empire to finally defeat his rival’s German legions in northern Italy and claim the throne – Niger’s campaign had never enjoyed any such success.
‘I assume we still have no real idea of how the usurper managed to wrest control of Alexandria from us?’
Marius could only agree. The loss continued to be a mystery, a thunderbolt of a defeat whose first announcement had come from the enemy. No clue as to how the port city had been surrendered had yet managed to evade the Severan navy’s blockade, but he had his suspicions. Some combination of overwhelming sea power, against which the eastern fleet had proven impotent, and simple bribery, with promises of wealth and position in return for a bloodless surrender, most likely, but the detail remained stubbornly lacking.
‘And if the loss of the stranglehold on Rome that controlling the Aegyptian grain supply promised us was not enough, our attempt to advance on the city in the footsteps of our divine predecessor Vespasianus met only with dismal failure.’
The legatus had been expecting his master’s discourse to reach this point sooner or later. Niger’s desire to achieve the same goal as that achieved by his deified predecessor, both in war and in peace, was well known. Total power would only be the means to his desired end, which was to cement his reputation with great building works in Rome and carefully curated governance of the empire, and eventually to be declared a god. As his death approached, a carefully prepared senate vote would assure his ascension to join the imperial cult, aligning him in death with predecessors ranging from the divine Julius himself down to Marcus Aurelius.
Instead of which, to his huge frustration, his army had suffered an ignominious failure to overrun a Severan force barely a third the size of his own army in the first battle of that campaign. A failure which had been turned into the ultimate humiliation by an eagle’s capricious choice of where to both land and defecate during a tense negotiation for the enemy legion’s surrender, showing that the gods’ apparent favour lay not with his own quest for power, but with that of his rival Severus. The emperor shook his head at the memory.
‘Any number of sacrifices with spotty livers could have been quietly ignored, until we cut open a more propitious creature, but it only took one eagle to open its bowels onto an enemy standard-bearer to put the fear of the gods into my entire army. I curse that day.’
As all men present knew, it had set the tone for the miserable campaign that had followed.
‘Our army has been most haplessly expelled from Thrace, and driven back deep into Cappadocia, and there is still no sign of our being able to turn back the tide of the enemy’s advance. Our legions are now forced to depend on the impassibility of the Cilician Gates to prevent the enemy crossing the mountains and resuming their pursuit. So, what are we to do differently, Publius, that might yet turn that tide and take us to Rome in victory. Be frank, and brutal if you must. I can accept the defeats that have led us to this moment; but if we are to prevail, we must leave no stone unturned!’
As the most senior of the generals gathered in the command tent, with the onus on him to lead the discussion as to what could be done to turn around a desperate position, Marius took a moment to think as to how he should respond to his master’s question before deciding that the great man was right, and that the time for brutal honesty was at hand.
‘Our position is as bad as it is possible for it to be, Imperator, other than if the enemy had already passed through the mountains and was massing on the Cilician Plain beyond them for one last battle of annihilation.’
Niger, until recently the de facto master of the entire civilised world east of the Propontis, the sea between Europa and Asia, and still just about in command of what remained of his legions, looked around him at his senior officers. All present shared the uncomfortable knowledge that Severus would like little more than to see them all dead, and their supporters in the senate executed as well. And that any man who donned the imperial purple but then failed to ascend to the throne in Rome faced both a grim death, and the ultimate humiliation for his family.
‘Details, Publius, details. And preferably accompanied by solutions to our problems!’
Marius blowed slightly in recognition of the emperor’s point. Knowing that while the problems the army faced were easy to point out, the solutions his master was demanding were somewhat less obvious.
‘The details are simple, Imperator. Our men have been retreating for two months, pushed back across the provinces of Bithynia, Galatia and Cappadocia and constantly harassed by the enemy’s scouts, with the usurper’s legions never more than a few days behind us. None of our legions has any greater strength than three and a half thousand men, and two of them somewhat less than that, as they took the brunt of the fighting in the defeat at Nicaea. And our supply position has gradually deteriorated, the closer the army gets to the Taûros Mountains, with less and less farmland at our backs with every mile we retreat, while our opponent can call on the resources of all the land he has taken from us. Losing the battle at Nicaea was, if not a mortal wound, a blow that has rocked us back on our heels.’
Niger puffed his cheeks out, recalling the moment in that battle when Severus’s legions, seemingly on the back foot and retreating, had been inspired by their eagle standards being thrust into the front ranks and had rallied to fight with unexpected vigour, brutalising the men facing them with a sudden and savage ferocity that had rocked them back in their moment of apparent triumph. It was such an unexpected turn in fortunes that a rout that might have destroyed his entire army had resulted, disaster averted only by Marius rallying his own legion’s most dependable cohorts to keep the exhausted enemy forces at bay until darkness fell. His defeated legions had thereby escaped down the narrowest of roads, between a mountain and a lake which he had then been able to defend and thus force a stalemate from a battle that had otherwise been a defeat.
Knowing that his defeated army might yet collapse, he had ridden with Marius, now promoted to the position of commanding general for the Syrian fortress city of Antioch, with the hope of raising a fresh army from its young men and the people of his eastern provinces. Since when his legion commanders had done nothing but retreat by fits and starts from the ever advancing enemy, knowing that to turn and fight would be tantamount to suicide with their men so exhausted and disaffected. The emperor stared hard at the map on the wall, pondering his narrowing options.
‘And so we find ourselves with few choices, and none of them promising success. Do you and your staff perceive any solutions to this problem, Legatus?’
Marius looked at his colleagues in the hope of support, only to find their eyes looking elsewhere, leaving him to lead the discussion alone.
‘There are few, Imperator, but they do offer us some hope.’
‘Hope? Of what, exactly?’
‘Hope of our being able to withdraw your army through the Taûros Mountains and across the Cilician Plain and over the Amanus Mountains to the safety of this fortress. Hope of keeping them in existence as legions, still sufficiently formed to be strengthened with the new recruits from the city who are flocking to your standards. And hope of getting them back within these walls, where any malcontents within their ranks will be more easily dealt with than in the field, where they are cheek by jowl with their comrades.’
Niger pondered his senior general’s somewhat gloomy definition of hope.
‘Your strategy is to retreat to the city and rebuild our army here to the best extent possible? I would of course prefer it if you could see some way to defeat the usurper Severus in the field, rather than our being forced to retreat further still. But if you can see no other way . . .?’
Marius looked around at the other men of the council he led.
‘We are agreed, Imperator, that asking your army to face the enemy once again, without the legions having time to rest and regain their strength, would be a gamble that might go catastrophically wrong.’
‘You think our men might not fight well?’
‘We think our men might simply surrender, Imperator. The dispatches from their legati tell us that they are disaffected, and in some cases on the verge of mutiny. Three defeats in a row . . .’ He saw Niger’s face darken with anger at the statement and realised that, invited to be brutally frank or not, he had crossed a line. ‘That is to say, one stalemated battle and two less successful.’
The men around them held their breath, waiting to see how the emperor would respond. After a moment he managed to master his anger, his words grating out in frustration.
‘Say it as you see it, Publius. I am aware that the army regarded the first battle in our campaign as a bad omen, and that Severus has since made much of the eagle that came to perch on his legion’s single standard rather than one of our three. I hear he’s even put the image of that moment on the reverse of a coin, may the gods damn him.’
Marius, having decided that silence on the matter was his best way to avoid poking the bear of his master’s temper any further, waited for Niger to exhaust his ire. After a moment the emperor gestured for him to continue.
‘Your proposed strategy?’
The legatus Augustus pointed to the map on the table before them.
‘After some debate, Imperator, we propose what we believe to be the best way to keep the army intact. They must retreat, at their best possible speed. Break contact with the enemy’s scouts and, frankly, run for Antioch. Once they have passed through the mountain pass of the Assyrian Gates, through the Amanus Mountains on the eastern side of the Cilician Plain, they can block the way against any pursuit by Severus with a modest enough force of your most loyal men. This will force them to take the longer route through the mountains to the north, and give us precious time in which to further fortify and provision this great city for a siege. Time to rebuild our forces and prepare to renew the fight for the empire, taking advantage of the fact that our enemies will be at the end of a very long supply line, and vulnerable to counter-attack. But before we can perform such a bold strategic move, the enemy must be denied passage through the Cilician Gates for at least a week, to allow time for such an escape.’
‘And you have engineers working on the Gates, as we agreed, in case we needed to make such a strategic retreat?’
‘Indeed so, Imperator. They are rebuilding the wall across the Gates’ narrowest point to a height of twenty feet. With the right defence it could be held for considerably longer than the week or so that is all we’ll need.’
‘Excellent. And we have enough loyal men remaining for such a task, of course, so there should be no problem . . .’
The emperor fell silent as his senior officers exchanged nervous glances. He turned to Marius with an expression verging on disbelief.
‘Tell me that we have enough loyal men, Legatus. Surely we can hold a pass as easily defended as the Cilician Gates for long enough that the rest of the army can outpace its pursuers?’
‘Yes, Imperator.’ Marius paused momentarily. ‘On paper, of course.’
Niger raised an eyebrow.
‘On paper, Marius?’
‘Theoretically, Imperator, we have enough strength to hold the Gates for months.’
‘And in reality?’
The general sighed.
‘It is hard to be sure, reading dispatches at such a distance from the army. But the tone of those messages gives us a concern that, were we to order any single cohort from any of your legions to remain in place behind the Gates’ wall, there is a good chance that they might—’
‘Desert from their posts the moment their comrades are over the horizon and marching for safety?’
‘There is that risk.’
‘Gods below. Things are worse than I thought. So, we’re building a wall that our soldiers might well refuse to defend?’
‘There is one way to ensure that the enemy are delayed for long enough to let the army make its escape, Imperator.’ Niger stared at him blankly, and Marius realised that he was going to have to spell the idea out for him. ‘Your men of the Guard are fiercely loyal to you.’
‘As well they might be, given how much gold . . .’ His general’s point dawned on Niger. ‘You suggest that we use the praetorians to hold the Gates? But then who would guard me, if the army is as disaffected as you imply?’
‘The joy of mounting a defence in such a narrow place, Imperator, is that it can be held with a relatively small number of men. A century or two would suffice, to line the wall and give the appearance of a larger force, and to light enough watchfires that the enemy believe them to be a cohort. All it will take is one resolute centurion, with the right motivation—’
‘You refer to some combination of gold, praise and threats, I presume?’
‘Quite so, Imperator.’
‘I see. And you have a man in mind, Prefect?’
The praetorians’ commanding officer stepped forward.
‘I do, Imperator. A centurion who is known to be staunch to your cause, and who has the ability to bend his century’s men to his will. Appropriately rewarded, I have no doubt that he will hold the Gates for long enough that your army’s progress across the province of Cilicia can be conducted without the interference of the enemy. I have taken the liberty of discussing this plan with him, and offering him a suitable reward for success, and he and his men are ready to ride at an hour’s notice. You should know that he also has a woman and child in Rome, in defiance of the regulations, so that might also be a motivating factor . . .’
He left the import of the bare statement of fact for the emperor to consider, and after a moment Niger replied with a twist of his lips that indicated a reluctant acceptance of the leverage implied.
‘Very well. Bring him to an audience with me after this conference is complete and I will further stiffen his resolve to give us at least seven days of delay to the usurper’s progress. Is that all you have to propose, Publius?’
The silence that greeted his question clearly unsettled him further, even though his general stirred himself to speak after only a brief pause.
‘No, Imperator. There are one or two other ideas that we would like to propose.’
Niger looked around at the members of his council, none of whom seemed all that happy about whatever it was that their superior was about to propose.
‘Go on.’
‘You will recall that when you first led your army to war against the usurper Severus, our progress west across Cilicia a few months ago was . . . perhaps a little less disciplined than we might have liked?’
‘I recall that on more than one occasion I was forced to make apologies to the elders of the cities we marched through, due to your men getting out of hand and either stealing or fucking anything they could get their hands on.’
‘Indeed so, Imperator. And that’s not a problem our generals have had so far on the return march, as the route has not passed through anything bigger than a village, and the supply lines have held up well enough to keep the soldiers fed. But now . . .’
Niger frowned at the suggestion of yet another problem.
‘Now what?’
‘The army has supply problems, I’m afraid. The outriders aren’t bringing in enough food to keep the army fed. It’s the time of year. What grain the local farmers have they are dependent on for their own food and planting the next crop, and so they are increasingly hiding what they need to survive before it can be requisitioned.’
The emperor shook his head in disbelief.
‘How many days’ supply does the army have?’
‘Five days, no more, at the last report.’
‘Not enough to get them back to Antioch.’
‘No, Imperator.’
Niger looked up at the tent’s roof for a moment.
‘You want me to slip their collar, I presume? Allow our men to run wild, and terrorise the locals out of the food that both they and my army need to survive.’
‘Put that frankly, Imperator, yes. To fail to do so will be to face a mutiny that can only end one way.’
The emperor seemed to slump a little, putting a hand to his head as the implications of the options from which he had to choose sank in.
‘When I took the name Justus little more than six months ago, I meant it to be a signal to the people of the empire that I planned a rule based on fairness and adherence to the law. And now you’re telling me that if I don’t allow my army to steal, rape and murder their way across an entire province, that army will rebel and most likely do exactly that whether I allow it or not?’
Marius could only agree, despite his own misgivings.
‘And most likely disintegrate from a fighting force into a rabble. If there were any other way, Imperator . . .’
‘But there isn’t, is there? Severus has reduced me to this, condemning my own people to be treated like a conquered country in order to do no more than survive.’ He waved a hand at Marius in a vague gesture of agreement. ‘Very well. Order the generals that the legions are to be permitted to forage actively across the army’s front, once they are through the mountains and into Cilicia. And on the day we take Severus prisoner, remind me of this monstrous necessity so that it can harden my heart against any thought of clemency.’
The legatus Augustus looked around at his colleagues while their master gathered himself, nodding decisively.
‘With regard to the strength and composition of our army, Imperator.’
‘Yes?’
The emperor’s tone of voice told Marius that he had already guessed where the discussion might be going.
‘The offer from Vologases . . .’
His master shook his head.
‘The answer was no six months ago, and it remains no today. I will not accept the offers of military assistance from Parthia. I know what King Vologases thinks he can achieve by sending his levies to our aid! At the very least he plans to use it as leverage to peel away our client kingdoms on his border. I am not in any way fooled by their rulers pretending to make independent offers of support, because I am sure that they are in reality acting at his behest. They are of course swayed by the proximity of his army, and the fact that our legions on the border are no more than shells, with most of their strength stripped out and sent west to fight this war. And I doubt that his ambitions end there. Before we knew it he would be disputing ownership of the fortresses on the river Euphrates, and after that the provinces of Syria and Cappadocia would tempt him to break our alliance and go to war for them. So the answer remains no.’
Marius inclined his head.
‘Understood, Imperator, and as expected, it was merely my duty to ask the question. But there was one more thing we wished to discuss with you, Imperator. A matter of some . . . delicacy.’
Niger looked up.
‘Go on.’
‘We have received . . . encouragement . . . from our friends in Rome to take direct action against Severus.’
‘Action?’ The emperor smacked a hand down on the arm of his throne. ‘We’ve fought three fucking battles against the man! I fail to see how we can take much more action than that!’
Accustomed to his master’s frustrations, Marius was careful to keep his voice level.
‘My apologies for being perhaps a little too opaque, Imperator. I mean that we are being encouraged to move against the usurper in the most direct manner possible. Our friends in senate who, let us not forget, somewhat outnumber his own, are becoming fearful that Severus will mount a campaign of terror against them if he defeats us, and they are therefore encouraging us to ignore the usual unwritten rules of these conflicts.’
The emperor stared at him for a moment.
‘You mean they want me to attempt an assassination? Gods below! What if we fail? Any thought of clemency he might still entertain towards me, and my family, will be snuffed out in an instant.’
‘True enough, Imperator. That said, he didn’t seem very merciful when he captured your staunch ally Aemilianus. He was one of the most highly ranked senators in Rome, a man Severus himself had sought to recruit to bolster his cause, and yet his execution was prompt, we have heard, and out of simple spite at his having rejected the usurper’s invitation to join his army and aligned instead with you.’
‘You make a convincing point. If I too am to be slaughtered out of hand if I lose this war, then doing everything I can not to lose seems sensible enough. But do we even have the means of undertaking this “direct action”?’
‘We do, Imperator. A group of men recruited by your spymaster Sartorius before he—’
The emperor rounded on him with an angry snarl.
‘Don’t tell me any details, you fool! I want it to happen, but I do not want to know anything about it. That way, if these men you have not mentioned to me succeed, I will be able to stand before the senate and tell them in good conscience that I had nothing to do with what happened. And that the killers must have struck from within Severus’s own army. Is that clear? Now fetch me this praetorian who’s going to buy us a week to get our army cleanly away from the enemy, through the mountains and across the plain, and I’ll explain to him both the depth of my gratitude and how much he has to lose if he fails to rise to this challenge. The man might as well know what he’s risking his life for.’
1
Taûros Mountains, Roman province of Cappadocia, 21st March, AD 194
‘Are we ready then?’
Manifesting out of the forest’s cold gloom, more of a shadowy suggestion of imposing size and power than a clearly defined man, the Briton Dubnus’s voice was its usual matter-of-fact growl. The voice that answered his challenge was cultured, speaking Latin as a mother tongue rather than with the rougher tones that often typified the men under his command, most of whom had learned the language from necessity rather than at their mothers’ breasts.
‘We’re as ready as we’ll ever be, thank you, Centurion.’
The big man turned to look at the speaker, the early evening moon’s faint illumination tracing the intricate lines of his superior’s gilded bronze cuirass. His legion’s first spear Draco stood silent in the gloom behind the legatus, a hand’s span taller and made even more imposing by the magnificent cross crest atop his helmet.
‘We? You’re not coming with us, Legatus, in case that had slipped your mind? You’ve been forbidden to do anything as reckless, by the order of—’
‘My own superior officer. Yes, thank you for the reminder, Dubnus.’
As was to be expected from the commander of a legion, Gaius Rutilius Scaurus’s voice was as level and reasonable as eve. . .
In thanking people for getting this story published, the fifteenth in the series, I need to go back and say thank you to someone who was very special to me over the lifespan of the previous fourteen, although I wasn’t to realise quite how much until early last year.
My wonderful editor Carolyn Caughey died soon after Clash of Legions went to press, leaving the entire publishing community stunned at both the suddenness of her passing and the fortitude with which she bore her last days. I was just a little broken to discover that her final editorial comments to me were written after her diagnosis, at a time when she was really quite seriously unwell, but with no hint of her illness whatsoever. While only having known and worked with her for about eighteen years – obviously some former colleagues will have known her for most of their adult lives – she was a joy to collaborate with and I remember her with great fondness and a continuing sense that there is a hole in my life where someone quite unique used to be. I wish that I could have said goodbye – probably a common sentiment across the publishing industry – but I suspect that Carolyn wanted to be remembered as she was in her prime, a kind and razor sharp professional whose memory I treasure as the person who gave me my break and nurtured the series through more books than I thought possible. Rest in peace, Carolyn.
After which I must of course say thank you to the people who made this book happen. My agent Sara O’Keeffe, my editor Oliver Johnson and editorial assistant Jake Carr, and all of the behind the scenes people whose names never figure in these thank yous but who play a big part in turning an author’s output into something readable. And, of course, my wife of forty years now, Helen, who continues to both crack the whip when needed and tolerate sudden ‘growth spurts’ in the books which lead to vacant stares and long thoughtful silences, as characters do their thing and push their way onto the page.
Thanks everyone, we all know it wouldn’t have happened without you.
Prologue
The city of Antioch, in the province of Syria, 26th February AD 194
The look on Gaius Pescennius Niger’s face as he walked into the audience chamber told his commanding general all he needed to know about the emperor’s mood. And if Publius Ampius Marius had been minded to any sort of encouraging thought of how much worse their position might have been with which to open the day’s commander conference, he quickly put any thought to one side. The meeting was, he was quite sure from his master’s demeanour, likely to be a difficult discussion.
‘Gentlemen!’ Niger dropped onto his throne with the look of a man not much in the mood for encouragement, looking up at his legatus Augustus expectantly. ‘Well then, Publius, what is it that caused you to request my presence at this conference? You usually manage to discuss our readiness to renew the fight with the usurper without my presence, so what is it that demanded I cut my morning bath short?’
‘Imperator.’ Marius bowed, careful to walk the fine line between the correct degree of respect and the sort of grovelling obeisance that his rival for the throne, Septimius Severus, was known to demand from his followers. ‘We have news from Cappadocia. A rider arrived two hours ago.’
Niger looked around the table at his generals and advisors.
‘And not good news, to judge from your carefully composed expressions. So just how bad is it? Speak frankly, Legatus; history rarely awards plaudits to commanders who deceive themselves or the comrades at times like these.’
To be fair, the legatus reflected, even a man as willing to deceive himself as to his prospects as Pescennius Niger, now the less well favoured of the empire’s two rulers – perhaps three, if one counted Clodius Albinus, currently bottled up in distant Britannia – must realise that the end of his imperial adventure was, if not near, certainly beckoning from the horizon. He opened his mouth to voice his opinion, but the emperor was still speaking, and in a sombrely reflective mood.
‘Perhaps we are not meant to win this war, gentlemen.’ His generals looked at each other, knowing from experience of their master’s moods what was likely to follow. ‘We were gifted with the most favourable starting position of any of the potential contenders for Didius Julianus’s stolen throne, with nine legions behind us and with total control of Rome’s food supply through our possession of the port of Alexandria. Much like that from which Vespasianus took the empire a century ago, and a position from which victory seemed assured. And yet . . .’
Indeed, Marius mused. And yet. In the space of a few weeks, while they had still been mustering their legions from across the Asian half of the empire to march on Rome, his master’s senatorial colleague, Septimius Severus, had used his power base on the Danube to gain the loyalty of every legion commander in Europa. Moving swiftly to take the city he had declared himself emperor, proclaiming his open rivalry to Niger’s rule while terrorising the senate into quiescence by the shocking departure from convention of allowing his army to walk the city’s streets fully armed. And where Vespasianus had indeed won the throne vacated by Nero a century before from much the same starting position as Niger had found himself in – sending his generals across the empire to finally defeat his rival’s German legions in northern Italy and claim the throne – Niger’s campaign had never enjoyed any such success.
‘I assume we still have no real idea of how the usurper managed to wrest control of Alexandria from us?’
Marius could only agree. The loss continued to be a mystery, a thunderbolt of a defeat whose first announcement had come from the enemy. No clue as to how the port city had been surrendered had yet managed to evade the Severan navy’s blockade, but he had his suspicions. Some combination of overwhelming sea power, against which the eastern fleet had proven impotent, and simple bribery, with promises of wealth and position in return for a bloodless surrender, most likely, but the detail remained stubbornly lacking.
‘And if the loss of the stranglehold on Rome that controlling the Aegyptian grain supply promised us was not enough, our attempt to advance on the city in the footsteps of our divine predecessor Vespasianus met only with dismal failure.’
The legatus had been expecting his master’s discourse to reach this point sooner or later. Niger’s desire to achieve the same goal as that achieved by his deified predecessor, both in war and in peace, was well known. Total power would only be the means to his desired end, which was to cement his reputation with great building works in Rome and carefully curated governance of the empire, and eventually to be declared a god. As his death approached, a carefully prepared senate vote would assure his ascension to join the imperial cult, aligning him in death with predecessors ranging from the divine Julius himself down to Marcus Aurelius.
Instead of which, to his huge frustration, his army had suffered an ignominious failure to overrun a Severan force barely a third the size of his own army in the first battle of that campaign. A failure which had been turned into the ultimate humiliation by an eagle’s capricious choice of where to both land and defecate during a tense negotiation for the enemy legion’s surrender, showing that the gods’ apparent favour lay not with his own quest for power, but with that of his rival Severus. The emperor shook his head at the memory.
‘Any number of sacrifices with spotty livers could have been quietly ignored, until we cut open a more propitious creature, but it only took one eagle to open its bowels onto an enemy standard-bearer to put the fear of the gods into my entire army. I curse that day.’
As all men present knew, it had set the tone for the miserable campaign that had followed.
‘Our army has been most haplessly expelled from Thrace, and driven back deep into Cappadocia, and there is still no sign of our being able to turn back the tide of the enemy’s advance. Our legions are now forced to depend on the impassibility of the Cilician Gates to prevent the enemy crossing the mountains and resuming their pursuit. So, what are we to do differently, Publius, that might yet turn that tide and take us to Rome in victory. Be frank, and brutal if you must. I can accept the defeats that have led us to this moment; but if we are to prevail, we must leave no stone unturned!’
As the most senior of the generals gathered in the command tent, with the onus on him to lead the discussion as to what could be done to turn around a desperate position, Marius took a moment to think as to how he should respond to his master’s question before deciding that the great man was right, and that the time for brutal honesty was at hand.
‘Our position is as bad as it is possible for it to be, Imperator, other than if the enemy had already passed through the mountains and was massing on the Cilician Plain beyond them for one last battle of annihilation.’
Niger, until recently the de facto master of the entire civilised world east of the Propontis, the sea between Europa and Asia, and still just about in command of what remained of his legions, looked around him at his senior officers. All present shared the uncomfortable knowledge that Severus would like little more than to see them all dead, and their supporters in the senate executed as well. And that any man who donned the imperial purple but then failed to ascend to the throne in Rome faced both a grim death, and the ultimate humiliation for his family.
‘Details, Publius, details. And preferably accompanied by solutions to our problems!’
Marius blowed slightly in recognition of the emperor’s point. Knowing that while the problems the army faced were easy to point out, the solutions his master was demanding were somewhat less obvious.
‘The details are simple, Imperator. Our men have been retreating for two months, pushed back across the provinces of Bithynia, Galatia and Cappadocia and constantly harassed by the enemy’s scouts, with the usurper’s legions never more than a few days behind us. None of our legions has any greater strength than three and a half thousand men, and two of them somewhat less than that, as they took the brunt of the fighting in the defeat at Nicaea. And our supply position has gradually deteriorated, the closer the army gets to the Taûros Mountains, with less and less farmland at our backs with every mile we retreat, while our opponent can call on the resources of all the land he has taken from us. Losing the battle at Nicaea was, if not a mortal wound, a blow that has rocked us back on our heels.’
Niger puffed his cheeks out, recalling the moment in that battle when Severus’s legions, seemingly on the back foot and retreating, had been inspired by their eagle standards being thrust into the front ranks and had rallied to fight with unexpected vigour, brutalising the men facing them with a sudden and savage ferocity that had rocked them back in their moment of apparent triumph. It was such an unexpected turn in fortunes that a rout that might have destroyed his entire army had resulted, disaster averted only by Marius rallying his own legion’s most dependable cohorts to keep the exhausted enemy forces at bay until darkness fell. His defeated legions had thereby escaped down the narrowest of roads, between a mountain and a lake which he had then been able to defend and thus force a stalemate from a battle that had otherwise been a defeat.
Knowing that his defeated army might yet collapse, he had ridden with Marius, now promoted to the position of commanding general for the Syrian fortress city of Antioch, with the hope of raising a fresh army from its young men and the people of his eastern provinces. Since when his legion commanders had done nothing but retreat by fits and starts from the ever advancing enemy, knowing that to turn and fight would be tantamount to suicide with their men so exhausted and disaffected. The emperor stared hard at the map on the wall, pondering his narrowing options.
‘And so we find ourselves with few choices, and none of them promising success. Do you and your staff perceive any solutions to this problem, Legatus?’
Marius looked at his colleagues in the hope of support, only to find their eyes looking elsewhere, leaving him to lead the discussion alone.
‘There are few, Imperator, but they do offer us some hope.’
‘Hope? Of what, exactly?’
‘Hope of our being able to withdraw your army through the Taûros Mountains and across the Cilician Plain and over the Amanus Mountains to the safety of this fortress. Hope of keeping them in existence as legions, still sufficiently formed to be strengthened with the new recruits from the city who are flocking to your standards. And hope of getting them back within these walls, where any malcontents within their ranks will be more easily dealt with than in the field, where they are cheek by jowl with their comrades.’
Niger pondered his senior general’s somewhat gloomy definition of hope.
‘Your strategy is to retreat to the city and rebuild our army here to the best extent possible? I would of course prefer it if you could see some way to defeat the usurper Severus in the field, rather than our being forced to retreat further still. But if you can see no other way . . .?’
Marius looked around at the other men of the council he led.
‘We are agreed, Imperator, that asking your army to face the enemy once again, without the legions having time to rest and regain their strength, would be a gamble that might go catastrophically wrong.’
‘You think our men might not fight well?’
‘We think our men might simply surrender, Imperator. The dispatches from their legati tell us that they are disaffected, and in some cases on the verge of mutiny. Three defeats in a row . . .’ He saw Niger’s face darken with anger at the statement and realised that, invited to be brutally frank or not, he had crossed a line. ‘That is to say, one stalemated battle and two less successful.’
The men around them held their breath, waiting to see how the emperor would respond. After a moment he managed to master his anger, his words grating out in frustration.
‘Say it as you see it, Publius. I am aware that the army regarded the first battle in our campaign as a bad omen, and that Severus has since made much of the eagle that came to perch on his legion’s single standard rather than one of our three. I hear he’s even put the image of that moment on the reverse of a coin, may the gods damn him.’
Marius, having decided that silence on the matter was his best way to avoid poking the bear of his master’s temper any further, waited for Niger to exhaust his ire. After a moment the emperor gestured for him to continue.
‘Your proposed strategy?’
The legatus Augustus pointed to the map on the table before them.
‘After some debate, Imperator, we propose what we believe to be the best way to keep the army intact. They must retreat, at their best possible speed. Break contact with the enemy’s scouts and, frankly, run for Antioch. Once they have passed through the mountain pass of the Assyrian Gates, through the Amanus Mountains on the eastern side of the Cilician Plain, they can block the way against any pursuit by Severus with a modest enough force of your most loyal men. This will force them to take the longer route through the mountains to the north, and give us precious time in which to further fortify and provision this great city for a siege. Time to rebuild our forces and prepare to renew the fight for the empire, taking advantage of the fact that our enemies will be at the end of a very long supply line, and vulnerable to counter-attack. But before we can perform such a bold strategic move, the enemy must be denied passage through the Cilician Gates for at least a week, to allow time for such an escape.’
‘And you have engineers working on the Gates, as we agreed, in case we needed to make such a strategic retreat?’
‘Indeed so, Imperator. They are rebuilding the wall across the Gates’ narrowest point to a height of twenty feet. With the right defence it could be held for considerably longer than the week or so that is all we’ll need.’
‘Excellent. And we have enough loyal men remaining for such a task, of course, so there should be no problem . . .’
The emperor fell silent as his senior officers exchanged nervous glances. He turned to Marius with an expression verging on disbelief.
‘Tell me that we have enough loyal men, Legatus. Surely we can hold a pass as easily defended as the Cilician Gates for long enough that the rest of the army can outpace its pursuers?’
‘Yes, Imperator.’ Marius paused momentarily. ‘On paper, of course.’
Niger raised an eyebrow.
‘On paper, Marius?’
‘Theoretically, Imperator, we have enough strength to hold the Gates for months.’
‘And in reality?’
The general sighed.
‘It is hard to be sure, reading dispatches at such a distance from the army. But the tone of those messages gives us a concern that, were we to order any single cohort from any of your legions to remain in place behind the Gates’ wall, there is a good chance that they might—’
‘Desert from their posts the moment their comrades are over the horizon and marching for safety?’
‘There is that risk.’
‘Gods below. Things are worse than I thought. So, we’re building a wall that our soldiers might well refuse to defend?’
‘There is one way to ensure that the enemy are delayed for long enough to let the army make its escape, Imperator.’ Niger stared at him blankly, and Marius realised that he was going to have to spell the idea out for him. ‘Your men of the Guard are fiercely loyal to you.’
‘As well they might be, given how much gold . . .’ His general’s point dawned on Niger. ‘You suggest that we use the praetorians to hold the Gates? But then who would guard me, if the army is as disaffected as you imply?’
‘The joy of mounting a defence in such a narrow place, Imperator, is that it can be held with a relatively small number of men. A century or two would suffice, to line the wall and give the appearance of a larger force, and to light enough watchfires that the enemy believe them to be a cohort. All it will take is one resolute centurion, with the right motivation—’
‘You refer to some combination of gold, praise and threats, I presume?’
‘Quite so, Imperator.’
‘I see. And you have a man in mind, Prefect?’
The praetorians’ commanding officer stepped forward.
‘I do, Imperator. A centurion who is known to be staunch to your cause, and who has the ability to bend his century’s men to his will. Appropriately rewarded, I have no doubt that he will hold the Gates for long enough that your army’s progress across the province of Cilicia can be conducted without the interference of the enemy. I have taken the liberty of discussing this plan with him, and offering him a suitable reward for success, and he and his men are ready to ride at an hour’s notice. You should know that he also has a woman and child in Rome, in defiance of the regulations, so that might also be a motivating factor . . .’
He left the import of the bare statement of fact for the emperor to consider, and after a moment Niger replied with a twist of his lips that indicated a reluctant acceptance of the leverage implied.
‘Very well. Bring him to an audience with me after this conference is complete and I will further stiffen his resolve to give us at least seven days of delay to the usurper’s progress. Is that all you have to propose, Publius?’
The silence that greeted his question clearly unsettled him further, even though his general stirred himself to speak after only a brief pause.
‘No, Imperator. There are one or two other ideas that we would like to propose.’
Niger looked around at the members of his council, none of whom seemed all that happy about whatever it was that their superior was about to propose.
‘Go on.’
‘You will recall that when you first led your army to war against the usurper Severus, our progress west across Cilicia a few months ago was . . . perhaps a little less disciplined than we might have liked?’
‘I recall that on more than one occasion I was forced to make apologies to the elders of the cities we marched through, due to your men getting out of hand and either stealing or fucking anything they could get their hands on.’
‘Indeed so, Imperator. And that’s not a problem our generals have had so far on the return march, as the route has not passed through anything bigger than a village, and the supply lines have held up well enough to keep the soldiers fed. But now . . .’
Niger frowned at the suggestion of yet another problem.
‘Now what?’
‘The army has supply problems, I’m afraid. The outriders aren’t bringing in enough food to keep the army fed. It’s the time of year. What grain the local farmers have they are dependent on for their own food and planting the next crop, and so they are increasingly hiding what they need to survive before it can be requisitioned.’
The emperor shook his head in disbelief.
‘How many days’ supply does the army have?’
‘Five days, no more, at the last report.’
‘Not enough to get them back to Antioch.’
‘No, Imperator.’
Niger looked up at the tent’s roof for a moment.
‘You want me to slip their collar, I presume? Allow our men to run wild, and terrorise the locals out of the food that both they and my army need to survive.’
‘Put that frankly, Imperator, yes. To fail to do so will be to face a mutiny that can only end one way.’
The emperor seemed to slump a little, putting a hand to his head as the implications of the options from which he had to choose sank in.
‘When I took the name Justus little more than six months ago, I meant it to be a signal to the people of the empire that I planned a rule based on fairness and adherence to the law. And now you’re telling me that if I don’t allow my army to steal, rape and murder their way across an entire province, that army will rebel and most likely do exactly that whether I allow it or not?’
Marius could only agree, despite his own misgivings.
‘And most likely disintegrate from a fighting force into a rabble. If there were any other way, Imperator . . .’
‘But there isn’t, is there? Severus has reduced me to this, condemning my own people to be treated like a conquered country in order to do no more than survive.’ He waved a hand at Marius in a vague gesture of agreement. ‘Very well. Order the generals that the legions are to be permitted to forage actively across the army’s front, once they are through the mountains and into Cilicia. And on the day we take Severus prisoner, remind me of this monstrous necessity so that it can harden my heart against any thought of clemency.’
The legatus Augustus looked around at his colleagues while their master gathered himself, nodding decisively.
‘With regard to the strength and composition of our army, Imperator.’
‘Yes?’
The emperor’s tone of voice told Marius that he had already guessed where the discussion might be going.
‘The offer from Vologases . . .’
His master shook his head.
‘The answer was no six months ago, and it remains no today. I will not accept the offers of military assistance from Parthia. I know what King Vologases thinks he can achieve by sending his levies to our aid! At the very least he plans to use it as leverage to peel away our client kingdoms on his border. I am not in any way fooled by their rulers pretending to make independent offers of support, because I am sure that they are in reality acting at his behest. They are of course swayed by the proximity of his army, and the fact that our legions on the border are no more than shells, with most of their strength stripped out and sent west to fight this war. And I doubt that his ambitions end there. Before we knew it he would be disputing ownership of the fortresses on the river Euphrates, and after that the provinces of Syria and Cappadocia would tempt him to break our alliance and go to war for them. So the answer remains no.’
Marius inclined his head.
‘Understood, Imperator, and as expected, it was merely my duty to ask the question. But there was one more thing we wished to discuss with you, Imperator. A matter of some . . . delicacy.’
Niger looked up.
‘Go on.’
‘We have received . . . encouragement . . . from our friends in Rome to take direct action against Severus.’
‘Action?’ The emperor smacked a hand down on the arm of his throne. ‘We’ve fought three fucking battles against the man! I fail to see how we can take much more action than that!’
Accustomed to his master’s frustrations, Marius was careful to keep his voice level.
‘My apologies for being perhaps a little too opaque, Imperator. I mean that we are being encouraged to move against the usurper in the most direct manner possible. Our friends in senate who, let us not forget, somewhat outnumber his own, are becoming fearful that Severus will mount a campaign of terror against them if he defeats us, and they are therefore encouraging us to ignore the usual unwritten rules of these conflicts.’
The emperor stared at him for a moment.
‘You mean they want me to attempt an assassination? Gods below! What if we fail? Any thought of clemency he might still entertain towards me, and my family, will be snuffed out in an instant.’
‘True enough, Imperator. That said, he didn’t seem very merciful when he captured your staunch ally Aemilianus. He was one of the most highly ranked senators in Rome, a man Severus himself had sought to recruit to bolster his cause, and yet his execution was prompt, we have heard, and out of simple spite at his having rejected the usurper’s invitation to join his army and aligned instead with you.’
‘You make a convincing point. If I too am to be slaughtered out of hand if I lose this war, then doing everything I can not to lose seems sensible enough. But do we even have the means of undertaking this “direct action”?’
‘We do, Imperator. A group of men recruited by your spymaster Sartorius before he—’
The emperor rounded on him with an angry snarl.
‘Don’t tell me any details, you fool! I want it to happen, but I do not want to know anything about it. That way, if these men you have not mentioned to me succeed, I will be able to stand before the senate and tell them in good conscience that I had nothing to do with what happened. And that the killers must have struck from within Severus’s own army. Is that clear? Now fetch me this praetorian who’s going to buy us a week to get our army cleanly away from the enemy, through the mountains and across the plain, and I’ll explain to him both the depth of my gratitude and how much he has to lose if he fails to rise to this challenge. The man might as well know what he’s risking his life for.’
1
Taûros Mountains, Roman province of Cappadocia, 21st March, AD 194
‘Are we ready then?’
Manifesting out of the forest’s cold gloom, more of a shadowy suggestion of imposing size and power than a clearly defined man, the Briton Dubnus’s voice was its usual matter-of-fact growl. The voice that answered his challenge was cultured, speaking Latin as a mother tongue rather than with the rougher tones that often typified the men under his command, most of whom had learned the language from necessity rather than at their mothers’ breasts.
‘We’re as ready as we’ll ever be, thank you, Centurion.’
The big man turned to look at the speaker, the early evening moon’s faint illumination tracing the intricate lines of his superior’s gilded bronze cuirass. His legion’s first spear Draco stood silent in the gloom behind the legatus, a hand’s span taller and made even more imposing by the magnificent cross crest atop his helmet.
‘We? You’re not coming with us, Legatus, in case that had slipped your mind? You’ve been forbidden to do anything as reckless, by the order of—’
‘My own superior officer. Yes, thank you for the reminder, Dubnus.’
As was to be expected from the commander of a legion, Gaius Rutilius Scaurus’s voice was as level and reasonable as eve. . .
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Empire XV: Field of Blood
Anthony Riches
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