Danube Legion

About the Author

Laurence Read is a former playwright, television journalist and businessman who grew up on a diet of Tom Sharpe, Joseph Heller, Saki and Evelyn Waugh. He lives in Hampshire but also spends much of his time in Hungary (where most of Danube Legion takes place).

Dedication

To MER and MPR for their support of all kinds and questioning if a tomato existed within the borders of second-century Rome.

To John Mark Nunn for getting me here through forced marches of all sorts.

Copyright Information ©

Laurence Read 2024

The right of Laurence Read to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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

ISBN 9781035860364 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781035860371 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781035860395 (ePub e-book)

ISBN 9781035860388 (Audiobook)

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Acknowledgement

To the curators of Aquincum, you have created a fantastic resource, especially to researching, would-be authors with children – plenty of distractions and the kids left wanting a second day. To the curators and people of Szőny – Komárom, both a thanks for your guardianship of the Brigetio Fort area and an apology – I’m sorry for interfering with your geography but I needed the hills 20 km to the East of you.

To Academia.edu for all your papers.

Part One

Cold Spring

Chapter One

Dawn of an Early Spring, 104 AD

Legio VIIIth Armoury briefing room, Argentoratum Fort on the Rhine Frontier

Germania Inferior Province of Rome

Good morning, does everyone have a hot drink? Armourer Cadet Bullo has provided this morning’s offering.

The pastries look like co…

Do they taste like them, Lulla? I wouldn’t know myself.

Ruben can find out what mine tastes like if I don’t get that copper by midday.

I am working on it without further incentive, esteemed workshop lead, Lulla.

Alright, settle down. The speaker then turned to a nervous boy of fourteen with very big forearms. Armourer Cadet Bullo, the drinks are hot, the pastries do look like cocks but don’t taste like them and more importantly there’s no gherkin, so well done, lad.

The cadets worked very, very hard at not fucking up the morning meeting’s breakfast. This briefing’s pastries had honey and walnuts with nutmeg – no gherkin – each carefully crafted into a knot shape that had probably looked great before the pre-dawn fires were lit. Within the legion’s ovens the edibles had swollen, to now look like little fat penises covered with ‘red dot’.

Chief Armourer Galba watched his team heads gather themselves in the whitewashed room. No table, just stools and trestles facing the massive Numidian head armourer and behind him his second. Ruben was standing with a charcoal stick ready to markup the room’s long wall, upon which was a riot of figures, drawings, boxes, dates and patchworks of fresher whitewash applied when projects ended and more space was needed. The chief reads through his morning notes quickly, wax tablets in one massive three-fingered hand while the other held a wooden mug, ‘Bulla’ carved into it, and a little honey-pastry dong with one of the balls nibbled off.

Chief Armourer Galba looked up when he had finished reviewing his notes and eyed the hulking figure of Acinius Medius ‘Workshop’ Lulla holding a pastry over his leather breeches, squeaking in a falsetto, Mweh famiwy is wery wery auld, wuffian, and you are a dirty plebian…

Right, fucking eat that, Lulla. We covered off the Honoured Tribune officer’s visit last week, DON’T TOAST! You lot. It’s not funny anymore. I’ll have no arse-licking or insubordination in this workshop. To business, I’m meeting with the Camp Praefectus at noon, by then I want to know that we are doing enough to keep sets coming through while ensuring to stay ahead of ourselves for the campaigning season. A hand raised. Yes, Fittings Menicitrix?

Boss, do we know what this will look like, the season, I mean, of course?

Yes, Menicitrix, the newish Emperor has personally given me a full set of campaign notes which is why later today, I will meet with the CP and apprise him of Legion operations for the spring and summer.

Pah! Come on, Boss, is it a war? Everyone is saying your Emperor…

Our Emperor, you Gaul c… Lulla rumbled.

Shut up, Lulla. He who desires peace doesn’t work in a legio armoury, Menicitrix, but let’s put it this way. I think we currently have an Emperor who would very much to paint his face red, or at least have the chariot slave do it for him, so let’s be ready. Ruben, repeat what you said to me last night, if you please.

Ruben held up the charcoal stick to the group and gave the military artisans a grin. They all amusingly groaned as the armoury second prepared to play up to his love of a diagrammatic explanation.

Gentlemen… started the dapper Second Armourer with his ridiculously posh hostage-Latin, before giving a detailed roundup of the previous winter months’ skirmishing strategy and then future possible moves east across the Rhine involving their VIIIth Legion. The charcoaled wall diagram, quickly sketched, saw the VIIIth Legio Augusta on one side represented as leering, slovenly legionary ‘Lucio’ and the Germans as pigtailed, huge breasted ‘Helga’ opposite.

Thank you, Ruben…and as ever, Helga. They all touched their cocks for luck and for Helga. But potential cross-border action does not mean we go hell for leather repairing the broken sets that come back from scraps. We need to finish the repairs on the workshops and all the other prep delayed because of the fire.

Fucking saboteurs!

Lulla, shut up. It doesn’t matter if it was saboteurs or, and I’m not having this argument again, a badly-supervised drunken cadet. We are behind. So, if you’ve got something useful to say, Workshop, let’s hear it.

Lulla gave a shrug. Well, the armoury is clean now. The primary bellows is optimal, the secondary still has a draught somewhere so we are winding it down and stripping the whole thing later today. All tools accounted for, no problems on that count now the cleaners have gone, thieving monkeys that they are. I do need pliers, though, Boss and ‘Guns’, old mate, I know you’re knee-deep but any chance of a hand getting the heavy press working again? Lulla was leaning back addressing a short, untidy looking, dark-skinned man with a bristling moustache at the back of the room – ‘Guns’ – who gave a thumbs up.

Workshop Lulla continued, Right, we are getting through the backlog on carts, pots and pans et cetera. Cutty stabby stuff’s fine, Cadet Briscos has a bit of a talent for the whetstone.

His breakfast’s shit! muttered someone at the back.

Sure, but he can sharpen stuff so we’ve just had him on that all week, think he’s going a bit… an in-out whistle, …to be honest but Cadet Briscos is a one-man sharpening army, that boy, and he does them properly.

You haven’t talked about sets, Lulla. was the suspicious statement from Chief Armourer Galba.

Sets are fine, Boss.

How many complete from scratch? Just twenty? Right, is this Old Sibius’ team? No, he’s not fine, I’ll come by this afternoon and he’d better not be handcrafting a Greek fucking urn. Move on. Galba took a bite and a sip before continuing.

Fittings Menicitrix! Workshop says cart supplies are coming out good, how’s the fitting?

Of course, you ask us to fit them... – shrug of the shoulders – …we fit them. It is simple.

It is simple but can we not have a repeat of ‘but you asked us to fit the carts, not the bridles’? I want everything that rolls, pushes and pulls to be checked with every chain, bit, harness and pin gone over.

Aggrieved, Boss, my team has done that. My team has… been… over… everything. Cross-legged, Menicitrix chopped his hand to emphasise the totality of thoroughness that had been enacted, except…

We have done what we can but…pah! The wood! Splintered axles, loose pegs, how can I fit on to this? Why should I fit on to this?

Ruben interjected to save time on one of the Chief Armourer’s legendary exchanges with the Gaul. Perhaps I could speak to the carpenters for you, Menicitrix? I’m having something done myself by the carpentry Immunes and will pop over there later this morning.

The Gaul gave a seated half bow. That would be acceptable.

Galba recommenced. Lists, gentlemen. Menicitrix, provide Ruben with a list of all that’s fitted and what needs replacing by the carpenters or stores. Have one of your little artists red mark everything bad with a paint brush before tomorrow morning. Workshop, same for you and we shall be doing inventories for the summer at the end of the week. Everyone! ‘Eat’ your forward stores, now is the time to get in as much as possible. If we don’t use it, Command will lower the resupply.

Lulla raised a hand. What about basic metals?

Ruben turned from where he had been using a straight length to draw up the weekly overview grid. The Chief Armourer and myself are seeing to the metal.

All metal, even copper?

Galba addressed the question seriously. All metal, just bear with us. Get your orders in and cannibalise existing stores of unworked metal. You all know I’ve been looking at sources and want to do more with all departments working up our own gear. The sets Lulla’s team forged over the winter show we can do it but ore reliability and quality remains the problem…

Workshop helpfully pointed out, That was Old Sibius and his team who did the forging.

Galba ignored that endorsement of Armourer Sibius and continued, We don’t want to rely solely on ore crates shipped from the Fabrica, the VIIIth should be able to manufacture complete sets if need be and certainly provide full spares from scratch. The problem is, I think we can all agree, that non-ferrous provision is currently not up to scratch and while decent ferrous ore is out there, he pointed to the wall facing the border. Not at any scale we have so far identified. If we are going to do this, buying scraps from the villages won’t get us anywhere. Where the Germans’ ferrous comes from, at this time, still remains a mystery. As for nonferrous…

A grumbling murmur from the team heads: Shithouse cottage copper!, Be better using my mum’s fucking cheese., Not quite the thing – that was Ruben.

Guns, how are you?

A nod and a tilt of the head. Nothing from under the bushy moustache.

‘How did he continue to get away with that moustache?’ thought Chief Armourer Galba as he regarded the little, dark, scruffy man. He knew the answer of course – ability. Galba was good with metal; his dad had been great.

Galba could spot ‘great’ though, even if he wasn’t himself, that’s what made him Chief Armourer. Guns was great.

Last week Ruben and Galba had taken a ride up with the artillery retrieval team. Over a temporary Infil pontoon across the Rhine to the ‘noncompliant’ Chatti fort that the Legion had overrun. Two Ballista support weapons had previously gone up by donkey with the VIIIth S&D force.

The chief and Ruben took an after-action tour of the fort: two Chatti braves spitted all the way through, the bolt having already passed through a half-cut plank palisade. A woman with no head sat under a shaft half a length deep in the headman’s lodge door. A massive, splintered hole where the gate had been, its post shattered by a heavy projectile to then collapse under the door’s weight. Finally, a bloody mess of limbs and guts in the longhouse.

One of the Infil team was still there amongst the smouldering ruins and keen to chat. …they’re all screaming and running about, the bolts are just going bam-bam-bam, blows the fence gate to bits so the Chatti all huddle in the lodge and the Tribune’s just like, ‘I ain’t wasting a single man on any of this shit!’ So, they just swing the big bows round on the trucks as they are, and the donkeys just drag ’em up to the gate line. The stupid Chatti bastards inside the lodge just watching them unhook, swing round again, stabilisers down, then – bam-bam-bam. How you get them to go so fast? I ain’t never seen faster. Just bam-bam-bam. Inside the chief’s house we can see bits of people just coming apart.

So, the Artillery Armourer, ‘Guns’, was ‘Great’, as in Alexander or that Greek prick in Sicily with the galley ‘upturners’. A master artificer. What Guns did with his various machines of war in that quiet methodical manner of his, always making a series of seemingly disconnected small adjustments, translated into the VIIIth Augusta’s artillery outgunning anything, anything the Chief Armourer had ever seen in any Roman Legion or other side of the battlefield.

Back in the morning meeting Galba asked, How’s the new Cadet then, Guns? The small Spaniard leant back and chuckled.

He’s there to tidy and keep you alive, Lead Artillery Armourer. Guns thought about this and made a gesture suggesting boredom.

Ruben, finishing the tasks and objective list, turned around to speak, My dear Guns, there is indeed a high responsibility to propagate a continuity of expertise within the noble Immunes serving the VIIIth and Emperor. There is also the other type of armourer who serves the legion in a more mundane and no less important way. Legionnaire Fubo, your new assistant, excels in this latter category. He is a seasoned man, VIIIth Augusta to the core, cannot even look at a wrinkled cot without taking action, thus safeguarding you from any further unpleasantness regarding the obsessions of the Camp Praefectus or his ilk. For instance, the rotting half-eaten fruit or tooth-stick incidents.

An affectionate chuckle went around the room. Guns’ toothbrush was now a legend in the VIIIth.

SATURNALIA, YOU HORRIBLE LITTLE FUCKING MAN! everyone now chorused in unison. The Spaniard just grinned.

Galba recommenced; So – nothing we can do for you, Guns? Guns shook his head contentedly.

Just remember: reliability always over performance, Guns.

And so far, it always had been. However, Galba had a nightmare of over-engineering that still persisted in his sleep at least once a fortnight. The bad dream was a fire line of high-performance onagers not doing anything in the middle of a savage battle because no one could find the yellow dogs (real, actual woofing dogs that somehow were essential to the firing of complicated catapults). It always ended with Galba running around screaming, Will this work? waving an orange cat at Guns, who just stared back quizzically as some hodge-podge of axe-wielding barbarians poured over the embrasures from the depths of the Chief Armourer’s sleeping fears.

Back in the real world, Are we done, Sir? Ruben asked. Galba leant back in his chair, leather-backed, intricately-carved sandalwood – a proper mark of rank. The Chief Armourer reviewed the new grid of black on the square of white wash behind him, made some amendments, set deadlines, reminded everyone of SOP’s – he liked to do this at the end rather than the beginning of the meeting so the reminder was fresh – then asked for any further questions, of which there were none.

Right, meeting’s over, all stand. Attention.

Each man up to this point could have been a contractor or builder anywhere in the Empire but now with a snap their bearing changed; no quips, ‘side’ or bollocks. The Emperor Trajan and the VIIIth August Augusta, MARS and JUPITER, we salute thee! Chief Armourer Galba declaimed,

THE EMPEROR TRAJAN AND THE VIIIth AUGUST… The armourers shouted back, two of them slightly crooking their fingers towards the dawn sun outside. Others pretended not to see the small gestures and all the department heads then filed out of the room leaving Armourer Cadet Bullo to clean up.

Learn anything, boy? The Chief Armourer asked him, not unkindly, on the way out.

Think so, Boss.

Go on.

Are sets worth the trouble, Boss?

The Senior Armourer smiled and left the room without answering.

Chapter Two

Same day, morning or just about,104 AD

Salona ‘by-the-sea’, a long way south of the Rhine

Roman administrative capital for Dalmatia Province

Just a thin cylinder of light found a way through the shutters. Lady Lassalia peered at it through one half-open eye. She demanded all the shutters in all her houses were absolutely flush. There were no gaps to let the sun through. Horus was to be invited in only as an expected and well-mannered guest. The source of the light came from a diagonally drilled hole made in one single shutter that, again, was a design repeated across all her bedrooms allowing a lone beam to hit the huge mess of a bed at midmorning precisely.

It was still bloody bright, she thought, but resisted the urge to bury her head back into the pillow. Sobe was a dehydrated lump of pain, the worst of it in her head but the stomach was none too good either. Her nostrils snorted away fumes, somewhere in the room was an opened amphora of half-drunk wine further nauseating various poisoned bits of fleshy plumbing.

Sobe Lassalia considered how she was going to get up, briefly thought about interfering with herself thus promoting a rush of sexual energy to haul her carcass out of bed, but discounted the idea. The ‘death’ would probably banish the headache allowing Sobe to just fall back to sleep again.

The mental tally of how much she’d drunk was a better ritual, because if you got to the point you couldn’t remember then it stopped being business and started being something else. Although the Lady Lassalia worried that her memory was too accurate as she totted up the quantities of Falernian, sweet sticky local wine, and the bonkers firewater the near-islanders distilled from Dionysus knows what. Which despite repeated, past experience, she always insisted everyone drink gone midnight.

The small glass cups she had had made up, so you could see the clearness of this Prometheus piss, had been a hit though. Everyone said so, especially the new Imperial-whatever-he-was who had definitely had too much fun.

And she was up. Without even thinking about it, suddenly Lady Lassalia was up and moving, half-tripped over a boot in the near pitch-dark, then threw open the shutters. The sun poured – no – flooded in. Dizzy, Sobe steadied herself against this morning’s spectacular manifestation of Horus, forcing her eyes to look at the vista. Lassalia’s southern-facing bedroom looked down on the main port and warehouse district of Salona. Sailors, stevedores, pulley men and carters thronged the Mediterranean port. Not that the mistress of the house could really see any of this, still being completely and utterly blinded by the blazing orb above.

Horus, you are a bit bloody bright this morning, thanks for bothering to rise and all that but you could tone it down a bit, girl’s a tad unwell this morning.

A cold sea breeze, it still being a spring morning, followed the sun, swirling around the room driving out the fumes of wine and stale incense. Sobe Lassalia’s liver loved the coolness. Salona wasn’t as far north as some of the firm’s houses but its temperature was why she’d never go home again. Egypt, with that still, heavy motionless air. At best everything slow, warm and sticky, not just the weather but the temperament. Her father’s trading house had been an operational metaphor for the country: sweaty, traditional and unhurried.

Eleazar! Her eyes split further open in pain and Sobe scratched under her left breast beneath the sleeping clothes, which ached and itched from having slept on it unmoving all night.

As an Alexandrian-Egyptian with Roman citizenship, Lassalia then mentally selected a few gods of the day from across the wide range of options available and dragged herself to the shrine table. ‘A-praying and a-swaying’ Sobe lit incense and carried out obeisances to the strange bedfellows of Osiris, Mercury and Flora. With the soul now cleansed, it was time for a more secular wash.

The breeze did the lungs some good and she coughed them into action, sucking in a few deep sacksful of air. Both the painted double doors of her bedroom opened with a sharp squeak.

Urgg…

Apologies, Domina. A bit loud?

I thought they’d fixed that bloody door. How many times is that?

I will send for the carpenters again and see if we can solve the problem once and for all.

It was just the tiniest of squeaks, the eunuch considered without resentment, one that most people could ignore or would never even notice. Yet his lady is incapable of letting a single item of imperfection slip. ‘Is this why fortune favours our house? After all, the gods like an obsessive,’ First Secretary Eleazar mused as he picked his way over a broken carafe.

I can hear you thinking, Eleazar. It’s too early for philosophy, sunshine. Anyone would think you were Greek rather than a Jew.

Do you think we need a clear up in here, Domina?

She turned and surveyed the wreckage, spilt liquid, half-eaten bread and a mass of twisted bedding. All overlaid on an immaculately mosaic’d explosion of cornucopias spilling wine, oil, wheat and fruit in amongst various Neptunes shepherding laden biremes and licentious nereids. The floor was set in pink and white marble tiles from Sicily, exquisite and wipe-away clean.

Maybe so, slave. I think I might also have left some wine open in here, I hope it wasn’t the good stuff.

Eleazar demurred. It wasn’t, my lady, it was the wine from Spain.

She started at him. Really? I didn’t demand the good Falernian at past midnight?

Eleazar greeted this question with studied silence. Technically, to lie was a death offence, to have deceived his mistress last night was a death offence. Obviously, neither would occur but the wine game was the first spar of the day. The Egyptian and her slave had a complicated relationship where the boundaries needed to be constantly probed and reassessed.

Example: Lady Lassalia instructs, at the beginning of the evening, not to allow her to open the good Italian Falernian past midnight when blasted unless she is with a certain rank or above, which is unlikely as a certain rank or above, in the political sense, tends to go home. Beyond midnight the Domina then demands the Italian Falernian for her new greatest friends, who are usually a fresh young official straight out of the Army, or second son keen to make contacts in ‘their’ new region, invariably the city magistrate and his wife, a couple of ship’s captains, a flock of Legionary officers and the Factua head who dotes on Sobe and loves being treated like a browbeaten husband each evening.

At midnight-plus, Eleazar always agrees to open the good Falernian and brings the ‘good stuff’ amphora filled with the distinctly medium stuff that came from Spain and, through a process known only to the eunuch, has had the mint flavour strained from it.

They stare at each other a moment. I need a wash.

The corridor outside Sobe’s room is unfrescoed, a plain yellowy cream but freshly applied.

The floor is greying pine, sanded and wax smoothed.

Head of House Sadiki walks down three entire floors. After her husband went travelling she preferred to buy and renovate this old Salona mansion upwards, near the centre of things, rather than keep the Roman-style family sprawl out in the ’burbs. Arriving at ground level, Sobe Lassalia moves through the back rooms still in her sleeping clothes, all baggy pantaloons and a tunic.

Morning, morning, hard at it, you lazy bastards? she shouts and laughs. The boys washing the flagstones grin, the girls carrying wood smile, embarrassed as they are every morning by their crazy mistress. Older women force honey infused drinks into the lady’s hand and a large plate of cut fruit – peaches, grapes, apricots and pears – followed the Domina out to the high-walled courtyard. The Lady Lassalia now took a swig of honey and cardamom, spat it into the sluice, declared she is being poisoned by her slaves, then strips and stuffs a slice of peach in her mouth. Two female slaves and a freeman’s girl go to the great oaken tub – cost more than the entire upstairs floor – and pull buckets of fresh water.

The first bucket elicits an invective-strewn scream, the new girl with the bucket pauses in fright but is told to keep going by her dripping mistress. So, she does and, once the edge of fear goes, finds throwing cold water over her mistress to be the most enjoyable part of the day, much more enjoyable than the hours spent under Horus’ eye filling the huge butt up again. After twenty buckets, That’s a – bloody – enough! is declared and a stool is brought for the Domina, a colourful, tasselled Persian stole draped over her.

Eleazar! Eleazar appeared now his mistress was clothed because while that Roman General took his sexual organs, neither of them – not that he has a choice – particularly want the weird dancing-around-naked dynamic of some such relationships. Unhealthy, impolite and dangerous. Mistresses parading around disrobed in front of male slaves who cannot physically consummate ‘the act’ bred resentment.

Too honest replies such as, You have put a pound on your thighs and your belly hangs like a tunny’s lip! tend to occur, leading to rapid resale or even more hysterical activities such as immediate scourging and death. Do you have any idea how much he cost? was how divorces began.

The Lady of the house has her long, lightly hennaed black hair combed with an ivory-toothed instrument set with lapis lazuli. The Persian stole is also a startling blue embroidered with gold and green peacocks. She eats some fruit and takes wax tablets from Eleazar.

Want a fig? He declined; it is a ritual of respect that she offered. He never took it, though. Much of what is said about eunuchs is nonsense, Eleazer has found, but the transference of appetites was a constant burning truth, and he was not going to become a fat eunuch.

Sobe munched a cut pear, flicking through the day’s notes, a combination of yesterday’s summary and the applications and messages coming into the house since dawn. The notes are divided into ‘work’ and ‘people’. She held up the ‘people’ tablet pointing at an etched mark.

Who is this Mako? Stupid bloody name.

The young gentlemen that was a little sick on himself last night, just after declaring his undying devotion to you as a widow.

I’m not a widow.

He would not take that as an answer and his people removed him when he offered to make you one in a fit of enthusiasm.

She chortled. Good luck with that, if he can find Hubs. So why am I meeting him again today? I met him last night, sounds like I was a hit. Leave it a week and then let’s go get some contracts, keep him panting for more, eh, First Secretary? Keep ’em keen, keep ’em…

His lictor came this morning, first thing, requesting a further audience.

Sorry… Lictor? What’s he doing with a bloody lictor? I thought he was one of Suleneous’ contracting staff.

He is, in a sense. In rank, however, this Mako is technically Suleneous’ boss’s new boss. His presence, though, is not permanent, just a temporary assignment while in Salona – but not ‘honorary’ – ‘actual’. Where shall we put his lictors?

There’s more than one? Four! What the hell is he? What’s four? I can never remember how many is what.

There are two answers to that. First answer is that his official title following appointment by the Senate…

And no doubt important daddy-dearest…

Wait for it, Lady…appointed by the Senate with special duties and roving responsibilities for a task or tasks in far off Lower Pannonia, yet unspecified. The second very official unofficial answer for seeing young Mako promptly is him being the new Emperor’s nephew.

Better get dressed, then.

I would have thought so, Domina.

She returns up the waxed, pine-planked stairs to the third floor, fruit platter all the time following. Dressed, painted and pinned, the Lady Lassalia then moved back down to the second floor of the trading house. In the rooms below her bed chamber are the three working offices of the Sadiki merchant house. Iron latticed windowpanes set with newfangled glass panes are open when she enters the senior executive’s suite. A fresh cup of honeyed fennel, more fruit, and the Head of the House (while her husband is away of course) surveys the seaboard traffic to the west. Six ships beating slowly in from the northwest, four outbound on fast reaches racing away from the rising sun. She knew what was in the outbound vessels and makes a shrewd guess about the inbound carriers.

Eleazar concurs with her guess and a boy is sent downstairs to fetch runners. One messenger will instruct a set of Sadiki representatives at the association houses with what to officially offload onto the market in the next hour. The other runner will tell, more discreet, agents to be on standby with buying ranges. The morning game is to visibly dump six tons of iron and flax through the open market, collapsing the commodities value (only to later surreptitiously buy back all Sadiki could through the shadow accounts). With iron and flax cratered, Sobe Lassalia’s people would be waiting dockside as the inbound ships arrive, hopefully with the merchant captains too weary and panicked to check average prices over the week or month.

Through pure greed the original buyers would, again hopefully, break the long contracts on the cargoes, usually set at a smaller discount to the average regional price, and try to wheedle down terms on the conveyors’ arrival. At this point the House of Sadiki will step, or shoulder, in and magnanimously offer to honour the long contracts at the original, agreed prices as a ‘show of good faith’. Thus offering some hope of a profit to the stressed captains. Unguents of ‘hope’ and ‘made luck’ glazed House Sadiki, glossing the well-structured machine of cunning and experience.

The clever bit, if we pull it off, will be we won’t even unload. Just re-contract the ships, load up all that lead we’re sitting on and send everything off around the corner to Athens as a combined product for a premium.

Eleazar nodded in assent and rang a small hand bell. Three green-peach-liveried men came in: the primary runner to the Association, the secondary to the ‘shadow house’ representatives and the backup holding both messages who would leave a thousand heartbeats after the first two. The last man being a contingency against competitive interception, morning drunkenness, incompetence or internal fraud.

Each green-tunic stepped forward to be briefed in a whisper by the First Secretary. The backup being the oldest and most trusted of the three men, four years with the Lady and fifteen within the House of Sadiki. A freedman with a family, the daughter of which who had been throwing buckets over the mistress just an hour before Pa’s feet hit the warmed slabs of the street heading down to the commercial district.

With that done, the office works in absolute silence. The glazed windows are shut for warmth and Sobe Lassalia reads at a white marble desk with her back to the eastern wall, occasionally glancing up in thought to look out west over the Adriatic sea. Around her are two secretaries, in the middle of the room a circular table with the administrators. Opposite the Domina, back to the western window (a view of the office’s eastern wall as befitted his station) Eleazar sits at his desk, flanked also by two secretaries. By the office door is a guard, there are five guards in the house although guests only ever see the four liveried doormen and Ugo the ex-gladiator prancing around downstairs. The office guard is the most dangerous of all Sadiki’s security staff and looks like a junior clerk – the fancy uniforms and gilded staves are all downstairs for show. This upstairs man is small with a dark grey shadowed beard, the only thing stopping him being completely nondescript.

His tongue was taken a long time ago so he had run and found employment with the caravans, fought well, and developed a talent for killing that boosted one of the Sadiki office profit lines by a whole two points for five years. Discreet by nature and rough surgery, he was taken off the eastern road trains by the Lady for service at her head office.

The guard just watched the gentle flow of messengers from outside and papyrus coming up from the clearing house downstairs. All of it is either for the administrators or Eleazar, no one approaches the Lady Lassalia until after noon. She is dealing with trade correspondence and an issue with the taxation levies of a locality, the Illyrian Governor or one of his juniors trying to lazily assert double duty on shipments within the province.

The only sound from Sobe comes as the warehouse and transportation dockets begin to be churned through. Check this one!, Why’s that for three hundred and the payment for two hundred, do we just really like the town of…? I don’t even know how to pronounce this…but somebody must because we are giving them a present of one hundred extra small pots.

Eleazar just took the clay tokens from the girl whose only job is to move between their desks. He is trying to work on a new writ which can be copied into template form by the scribes downstairs. His objective is to incorporate a new level of legalese, to essentially have it as a prima facie civil litigation submission with enough florid insertions to allow the reader to surmise that this is an aggressive, deeply personal vendetta being screamed out to a scribe by her Ladyship.

‘Look mate, she’s off her fucking head and I know it was windy but do you think she has any idea? A woman?’ was one of House Sadiki’s greases. Eleazar enjoyed replicating into script his Domina’s ‘doing a bit of cheeky Aventine one-of-the-boys’ playacting, within the soon-to-be subpoena template.

As he tries to write the writ, Eleazar deals with the three sendbacks dispatched with accompanying snorts from the other side of the room. One was a mistake from downstairs, caught – fair enough; one was his fault as he’d missed the docket numbers off, but the three cargo release orders were essentially good. The hundred extra pots were meant for a stage drop before the final destination at – what was that place with all the ‘Y’s? – with the loading instruction being a gross amount.

With communications thumping up the stairs from the outside world, Eleazar loaded up a wax tablet with key items that needed to be dealt with during the vital working session before lunch. These later morning’s issues were primarily in relation to the large caravans due to go out from the northern Sadiki offices once tracks drained and hardened at spring’s end. Lady Lassalia and her First Secretary were having a long running debate over the advisability of mobilising an overground transfer between two rivers. The pros and cons were endless but encompassed double handling, time – always time –, security of land versus water, cost and ‘repeatability’.’ Never try to do anything once’ was one of the watch phrases of the new House of Sadiki now three years in, since Master went away.

On this bright morning, neither the Lady or Eleazar had made a decision on what to do with the caravan, no fixed positions from either were held anymore on what to do and they oscillated constantly on solutions depending on the day. Last week they had both agreed on the same thing on the same day, but it spooked them that they’d missed something and the decision was deferred. By the next morning, both woke up with opposing stances again.

Eleazar put his head down and scraped out the ‘key tasks’ list into the wax. Mistakes rectified, misunderstandings checked, all ready for reapplication in the (generally-recognised more congenial environment of the post-client lunch) afternoon. In addition to the northern caravans, the discussion list was so far as follows:

Internal Salona. SPQR out of Baia ‘Drusilia’ 20 cubits available, west,

deviation if filled. Fill two days

Int Sal. Thebes, Conveyance ‘Daughter of Osiris’ vessel downgrade to

likely – un-seaworthy.

External Theb. Uncle Sham introduces son/captain to hon house Sadiki –

allocate ‘Daughter of Osiris’?

Int Sal. Wine & sundries above non-approval limit.

Int Sal. Further wine & sundries above non-approval limit.

Ext Numidian Carrier ‘Prince’. Live cargo {Tall} – ‘Yes?’ forty cubits

special. No fill charge. Reply four days.

Int Sal. Civil court case creditor no.32 – funds received. Release 1s, 1d?

Finished with that, the last stream of work for Eleazar was to review a tablet to the right marked ‘Clients’.

Clients could be customers, could be suppliers or political contacts or amusing timewasters. It might be the Army or Navy of Rome needing a favour or a favour needed repaying, or somebody else’s army or navy. Civil servants, other merchants, lawyers, dock representatives, builders, judges, hangers-on or, worst of all, relatives like Uncle Sham’s son looking for work.

The problem was that today’s client meetings entailed a four-lictor-carrying relative of the Emperor Trajan. Entertaining royalty and the overpromoted was something the House of Sadiki excelled at. Two problems, however, presented themselves:

One. Everything First Secretary Eleazar had heard about the Emperor Trajan was that he ‘did things’, was an ‘up-and-at-em’ projects person. Nephew, then, was unlikely to be a totally useless wastrel (despite last night’s evidence) or a po-faced, recently demobbed officer methodically wading through a regional posting like it was a rainy-day parade drill before being kicked upstairs back to Rome (or killed in a Salona brothel fight by a deserter he didn’t have the good sense not to recognise).

Two. The lictors. Why did the Emperor’s Nephew have lictors and what was four lictors anyway? Literally, the lictors were large musclebound ex-soldiers carrying the bunched rods and axe to denote a senior government rank. Different amounts of lictors were allowed based on different Roman ranks ‘as every fule nose’. For the life of him Eleazar hadn’t a clue what four lictors was and had sent a hurriedly written note to his ‘good friend’ – as the individual in question always insisted he and the Jewish slave, Eleazar were – at the Dalmatian Governor’s palace. His ‘friend’, Aulus Scipio Pallo – yes, those Scipii – was a permanently amused, top drawer aristocrat who replied;

‘Not quite a general? Both Curule Aediles going on holiday together? An ambitious lumberjack? Where are you going to put them all at lunch, they are quite big – the lictors I mean? Much love. PS Let me know how’s it goes. Kisses.’

While on the face of it these answers were flippant if not totally unamusing, the Scipio had given a clear message. ‘The nephew has been given an odd number of lictors because he’s here on big boy business, outside of senate structure, so don’t just lend him the nice corner office overlooking the park and take him to lunch every day. It is all very irregular and we have to find a way of making something happen because the Emperor seems to actually want something proper and grown up to happen. PS This has nothing to do with my office of cultural affairs but I am…interested. Kisses.’

Eleazar decided not to send any cancellations or postponements to the usual clients.

He’d let all come at midday thus encouraging a lively antechamber and allowing the town of Salona to see that Sadiki entertained one of the Imperial family. Even if none of the other clients were actually seen by Lady Lassalia today, it was a ‘When I was talking to the Emperor’s nephew the other day…’ gift to them all and the locals would be grateful. First Secretary Eleazar would have the breakfast fruit platter rearranged and taken downstairs for the clients once she’d finished picking the good bits out of it.

Chapter Three

Roman Infiltration team

Sunup over the east hills, four stadia north of the Danube

Macromanni Kingdom

Point lay absolutely still, eyes half closed, rag-wrapped body pushed down into the sparse foliage of an early spring hillside. The forward scout smells the horse, hears the breaking twig noise under the clatter of bone scales as the rider halts the mount to turn back, no doubt peering hard into the forest. The brown-white mare readjusted stance at its rider’s command and a hoof thumped a few handspans from Point’s ash-painted face.

Complete quiet. Lead Scout can feel the rider listening. Across the forest path, set back in a clump of old leaves, Point met Six’s eyes staring back. The team had not made enough progress during the night. With an arm-injured Three the Infil Immunes party was forced to backtrack up and down the higher ridges through the darkness, many leg-burning times. They were now seven days into the insertion and the eight-man Infiltration team had picked up the patrol on the third evening, just after killing that mercenary having a piss. For the next two days the Romans hadn’t laid sight on their pursuers, just the hoof tracks, occasional noise, flight of birds or deer or startled boar crashes from the undergrowth. But they knew they were being tracked and tried every trick in the ledger to shake off pursuit. The pursuing patrol was very good, though. Gradually the hostile riders had circled in closer and closer.

A night had been spent half floating in a brook. One day the team had all run up the sheer, scree side of a small mountain, legs screaming with pack and weapon weight trying to drag you down – this is where Three had broken his arm. The scramble gave the team half a day’s space but the horse patrol managed to pick them up again two hours before sunset. These riders were always at the advantage, knowing where their quarry’s eventual destination must be: crossing back south over the Danube into Roman territory.

A low bird call sounded ahead, then vibrations passed through the earth to Point’s resting elbow as the horse and its rider moved off. Point continued to stay stock still as he lay crouched in the hill scrub and, sure enough, the rider suddenly wheeled the painted horse back again to a stop just a few paces further along the path. The scout breathed steadily through the nose and out the mouth, the horsewoman’s eyes scanned and she seemed to look straight at him as her gaze passed by.

‘…grasses and shadow, just winter grass, spring shoots on a hill…’ Eyes unfocussed, lids half closed, Point silently incanted his grandpapee’s spell of stealth.

The riders were not Macromanni or any type of local German, they were women for a start. Roxolani tribe virgins, brought down from the far, far northern plains of the Sarmatian lands. Hunched up in the snow, Point had seen them once before at a mid-distance, trotting along a tributary bank during last winter’s turn. Celerinus, their local guide, pointing the women out excitedly from the dank hollow – the fabled Roxolani girls and widows. Right shoulders visibly hunched up with muscle, each Roxolani woman having been bound at birth to make those big spear arms. Then, according to Celerinus, only able to marry on the taking of three scalps during the numerous horse vendettas that dragged on in such places. It had sounded like bullshit to Point but now, up close, he wasn’t so sure. These women looked well up for delivering a scalping.

Lured by Dacian gold, sex and a constant need to prove their cavalry, the Roxolani queen had done a deal, sending troops into Macromanni territory for a bit of a proxy trouble. The Sarmatians ignoring the feeble old Macromanni king’s protestations as the pull from Emperor Decebalus’’ mines proved too strong. The hot-headed son, the Macromanni Prince, was probably in on it as well. That’s what the Skipper reckoned anyway with Two adding, Horse people like wearing a bit of gold, don’t know why, must be the weather.

None of the Skipper’s geopolitical musings were currently passing through Point’s mind as these extraordinary irregulars stood right in amongst his team with weapons drawn. All of the scout’s focus was on staying still and thinking about being a very small shrub.

Heels shifted to calm the horse as the Roxolani looked directly about the path around her mount’s feet. Thorough. She was an impressive sight, not just because of her sex; blue tinted dragon’s teeth armour made from split hooves, a tasselled lance held by that enormously-muscled right arm and two small spears grasped with the normal-sized left hand, all the shafts tipped with sharpened bone dipped, by the looks of it, in shit. On her head was a short felt-coned hat, stiffened with green leather and a plume of blackbird feathers that snaked down a long night-haired back braid. Point could see her eyes were also green under the warpaint, she was that close.

The slightest of movements flickered to the left of Point’s eye, behind the rider’s back. He prayed that murderous Two just stayed where he was, there was no doubt his colleague was repositioning to slit the woman but even if he did so noiselessly, the horse patrol would miss their comrade instantly – then the Infil would be dead. More bird calls warbled continuously now, up and down the sweeping line from the forest just ahead.

‘Just a stone in a bush, a shadow in the briar, old winter leaves, don’t be a fool, Two.’

Abruptly the black-feathered rider cantered forward down the track, lance lowered, stabbing at foliage. The noise of the hooves was a clattering relief and Point allowed himself a full breath.

No one moved, everyone was to the north of Point, on the other side of the track, downhill.

The team had been making its way up this ridge for two hours now.

Before dawn, they’d made a mad, forced dash on exhausted legs across the flood plain, tripping and falling into marsh water and black mud. From the cover of the Yellow Hat hills, the eight men had made for the forest-covered ridges that rose then fell back down to the great green-blue river. The rising sun chasing the team every step of the way and they hadn’t been quite quick enough. Half a mile to the river forest a Sarmatian horn sounded. The Infiltrators didn’t stop running, knowing that the horse patrol had lazily, and quite sensibly, pulled out of the night-time cat-and-mouse chase, instead choosing to have a pleasant breakfast. Over rye bread and boiled eggs, the Roxolani cavalry had waited at the edge of the exposed grassland leading back to the river. Then like a sparrow hawk spotting a field mouse, they mounted and flew to the chase. The Romans made the river hills with the thunder of hooves a third of an hour behind at their heels. In the forest rising towards the Danube’s northern ridges., that’s when the real fun began.

Back in the scrub, Point could see Six still staring back at him. He also knew Four and Five were supporting the injured Three somewhere to the left down-slope. Comms was no doubt further back, but the Skipper could be anywhere. Point looked for their leader, turning his head with the very smallest of movements then – there! Gods, Skipper’d been even closer to her than Two, by the tree right where the rider had made her wheel. Skipper had in turn made his scout, leaning out from the trunk and lifting a forage flat cap so they could make eye contact, Point rose ever so slightly to do the same.

Hand signals from the team leader; ‘Move?’ It was Point’s decision, without hesitation he chopped negative and gestured behind with a moving back of the palm then finger to the mouth. The Skipper affirmed and sent the command, one by one it hand signalled along the staggered, hidden stick of men.

Sixty beats passed and almost silently another follow sweep of Roxolani appeared, confirming Point’s hunch, this time on foot. Two pairs leading reined horses, mounts and riders shod in soft moccasin slips. The nearest couple were close, one grey-haired, wary-looking woman with a buckler of hide and a steel sword