Caesar's Lord, page 12
Rex nodded. “I’m Germanic too, sir. I know how deadly we can be in war. And those men have some special skills beyond just valor and ferocity.”
“Let’s do it,” Constantine said. “Arcadius, make the arrangements. And may God be with us.”
A construction project was begun at the wide, shallow crossing. After trees were felled, the army carpenters hewed them into logs and started lashing them together. “It has to work like this,” Rex said to the head carpenter. He put his right fist to his left shoulder, then swung his arm straight out, keeping it parallel to the ground. “Like a hinge, swinging downstream.”
“I get it,” said the carpenter, who passed on the orders to his men.
Soon a floating bridge had been built, intact and ready to use but held back from the riverbank because it would be in range of the enemy archers once it was deployed. Using the speculators’ length of rope as a guide, the bridge had been made exactly the width of the river crossing. Sharp stakes were fastened to what would become its far end. The men nicknamed their creation “the Wolf” because the stakes hung down like pointy fangs, certain to catch into the mud flat on the opposite shore.
At sunrise the next morning, while the enemy was still sleepy, a squad of husky men picked up the Wolf and hustled it toward the riverbank. A hail of arrows began to arc across the river, but Constantine’s bowmen returned the shots and forced the enemy archers to take cover. A few of the men carrying the bridge fell beneath the onslaught, but others stood ready to swoop in and take their place.
As quickly as possible, the carriers laid the bridge in the water along the length of the shoreline. One end of the bridge was lashed into place with ropes that had a little play in them. These ropes were fastened to boulders on the riverbank. But the other end of the bridge—the end with the “fangs”—was tethered by only a single line that could easily be released when the right time came. With a push from a pole, the current would swing the bridge out and the fangs would catch in the mud on the far side. The connection would be solid, allowing the troops to cross swiftly and engage the enemy. Yet today was not that day.
Night fell, and campfires twinkled to life one by one among the trees on both sides of the river. All the men were restless, knowing an attack was imminent. Rex gathered his twelve speculators at the horse corral. “Mount up,” he told them. “We ride tonight to our staging area. The attack begins at dawn.”
The twelve riders followed Rex down a deer path that snaked north through the forest. Soon the ground began to rise. As they neared the top of a knoll, they heard a gruff voice hail them. “Password?”
“Beer and sausage,” Rex said. For a moment, there was only silence. Then there was a chuckle, followed by words spoken in guttural German. “You may pass, brothers,” said the sentry, and the twelve speculators rode into the fireless camp of the Batavi.
The Germanic mercenaries were fully armed and armored. Their ponies were enclosed in a dense copse of thorny bushes that would keep the creatures nearby yet block any sounds they might make. Over eighty Batavian cavalrymen were encamped here with their captains, all of them expert horsemen and devastating warriors. And just down the back of the hill, away from the river, was a camp of five thousand archers whose quivers bristled like porcupines. Not one of the men wore armor. Everything was ready for Rex’s plan.
Hours passed as the troops chatted in whispers or dozed wherever they could. Though a few men chewed on pieces of hardtack or jerky, nobody had hot food, for campfires were strictly forbidden.
In the darkest and quietest hour that always precedes the dawn, Rex gave the signal for the troops to mount up. The twelve speculators were all trained in a skill that the Batavi were famous for inventing: riding a horse into a river, slipping out of the saddle as soon as the hoofs left the bottom, and jumping back into the saddle as soon as the mount found purchase on the other side.
Only the strongest horses could swim with an armored man clinging to them like dead weight. Yet the right horses could do it if the crossing wasn’t too wide. And Rex’s speculators had located the ford where the river was at its narrowest. Their rope had proven it was twenty-five paces wide—the upper limit for such a turbulent crossing, yet doable. A whole army couldn’t ford here, but elite forces could—and these were the best of the best. Licinius’s men had no idea what was coming.
Careful to make no sound, Rex’s riders picked their way downhill through the trees until they were lined up just inside the foliage at the river’s edge. For what seemed like a long time, they waited in total silence. Suddenly, far downstream, a trumpet sounded. Constantine’s men were pushing the Wolf’s fanged end into the current. The contraption would swing out on its flexible ropes until the spikes lodged firmly into the other side. Rex waited a moment longer until he heard what sounded like battle cries. Then, without saying a word, he prompted his horse out of the shrubbery and into the Hebrus’s swift flow.
The hundred riders surged into the water like a fierce Aegyptian crocodile entering its natural element. The speculators and the Batavi immediately dismounted, always on the upstream side of the horse lest they lose their grip and be swept away. Rex’s pony was a sturdy dapple gray from the Sarmatian plains. It clearly knew its work, churning ahead with its powerful legs fighting the river’s flow. Halfway across, only the heads of the horses and their riders were above the surface. The water was icy cold, and the current was pushing the animal in a diagonal line as it crossed. Yet Rex had planned for that, identifying a fallen oak downstream as the rendezvous point for his men.
Rex could feel the change in movement as the dapple gray’s hoofs made contact with the riverbed again. He slid into the saddle and rose up from the river as his mount charged into enemy territory. Now it was time for a battle cry. “For Constantine!” he shouted with his spear raised to the dawn. “For Constantine!” all the men echoed, and the Battle of Hadrianopolis began.
The cavalrymen broke out of the trees that lined the river and immediately encountered resistance on an open field. Yet the Licinians had been taken by surprise and were badly out of position. Some of them didn’t even have their helmets or shields, for they had been startled from sleep and leapt into the saddle without adequate preparation. The muddled troops were no match for either the expert warcraft of the speculators or the skillful horsemanship of the Batavi. A horn sounded a retreat, and the enemy fell back. Rex urged his men to follow the fleeing riders and press them toward the Wolf.
But partway toward that wide, flat crossing, the retreating Licinians ran into a contingent of their own comrades who had determined that the attack at the bridge was a ruse. Since no one from Constantine’s side had actually crossed after the trumpets blew, the guards had guessed that the real attack was happening upstream. Leaving their post, they had rushed to defend against the assault.
Rex signaled for his horsemen to stop. The Licinians whom he had just sent running were mingled with the defenders arriving from the bridge, creating a chaotic mess on the field ahead. Rex told his horn blower to call for a barrage of arrows. The man trumpeted out the notes, and the shafts immediately descended from the five thousand Constantinian bowmen who had swarmed behind the Batavian cavalry, swimming unarmored as they crossed to the empty riverbank. Now the defenseless Licinian troops were mown down like wheat stalks under a scythe that cut them from above.
“All pull back!” shouted some brave soul who had assumed leadership of the disorganized enemy. As the men retreated, Rex pressed ahead and took the relinquished ground. Corpses were strewn across the battlefield with feathered shafts protruding from them. The speculators and the Batavian cavalry galloped over the slippery carnage and kept pushing the enemy toward the Wolf.
But upon their arrival there, the Licinians found a deadly foe awaiting them. After the defenders abandoned the Wolf to engage Rex’s attack, General Arcadius launched a force of heavy infantry onto the makeshift bridge. They had surged across the solid timbers and were now on the eastern shore, mad as hornets and ready to fight. Caught between Rex’s riders and the newly arrived footmen, the Licinians were continuously rained upon by the archers’ perfectly placed shots. They were in a killing zone. No escape was possible. The men fell by the thousands, and the rout was on.
Now the work of the scouts was done. The legionaries from the bridge had capable commanders who didn’t need Rex to help them finish their job. After disengaging his force of elite warriors from the fray, Rex gathered the young men in a sheltered place. He couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief as he realized that his risky plan had worked to perfection.
“Well done, sir,” said a wiry, teenaged speculator with a cocky grin. “Nice riding for an old-timer.”
Rex scoffed at the remark. “I eat kids like you for breakfast,” he said, then used the flat of his spearhead to bang the man on the helmet.
“What now?” asked another young speculator.
“We say a prayer,” Rex replied, “because God just gave Constantine the victory at the Battle of Hadrianopolis.”
For the rest of the day, the Constantinian troops swarmed across the river and obliterated Licinius’s army. Around sunset, Rex learned that the enemy’s field camp had been captured. Only when night fell did the slaughter finally stop.
When the victory trumpet sounded, the whole army let out a great cheer. Rex joined the chorus and raised his sword to the sky. But the looting that usually followed a victory did not occur, as Constantine had put his men under strict orders not to enter Hadrianopolis lest they be unable to resist the temptation to plunder it. All the gates were to remain locked with the citizenry inside and unharmed. “One does not blame the horse that is bitten by a horsefly,” the emperor said, “nor the swimmer who picks up a leech. This city did not ask to be infested by parasites, so it shall not bear the punishment of harboring Licinius.”
That night, after a dinner of potato soup and boiled leeks, Rex curled up by a campfire and fell into the sleep of the exhausted. At dawn the next morning, he was summoned to the imperial tent, which had been moved to the eastern side of the Hebrus, not far from the city walls. Apparently even Constantine was refraining from going inside the city—perhaps to show solidarity with his men, or perhaps because he didn’t want to risk changing his mind about his clemency.
The tent had been set up in a flat, grassy area beneath a canopy of slender beech trees. All the dukes, tribunes, and other officers who had led the various legions had been summoned for the morning report. They encircled the front of the tent and waited for the emperor to emerge. Since Rex was only a junior officer commanding the field scouts, he took up a place behind the higher-ranked men.
Soon Constantine exited the tent with General Arcadius at his side. Constantine walked stiffly, for he had been wounded in the thigh in yesterday’s hostilities. A small lockbox was in the emperor’s hand, which he opened and displayed. Bright gold gleamed inside, making all the men marvel. “This is just a tiny bit of the treasure we have captured,” Constantine announced. “In all, it is a magnificent sum, and I proclaim a donative of two thousand denarii per man. As for the Batavi who led the first charge”—Constantine searched the crowd until he caught Rex’s eye—“I proclaim four thousand! How did those boys learn to swim horses like that?”
“Because the barbarians can’t build bridges,” Arcadius said gruffly, though not incorrectly. “How else can they cross rivers?”
Rex ignored the remark. “The Batavi honor your generosity, Your Majesty,” he answered with a polite tip of his head. “I shall inform them straightaway.”
Now General Arcadius proceeded to give some facts that had been learned overnight. The estimated number of Licinian dead was thirty-four thousand. Several thousand more had surrendered and expressed a desire to switch over to Constantine’s side. Fourteen high-ranking officers in the enemy army had also been captured. When one surly duke shouted for their immediate execution, Arcadius shook his head. “Our merciful leader has decreed that they shall not be killed, but be stripped of their rank and posted at the edge of Britannia, north of Eboracum, at Hadrian’s Wall.”
I know it well, Rex thought, for he had grown up in that region while his father served Constantine there. It will be a cold and rainy place to live out their final years. But at least they will still have their lives!
“What of Licinius?” the grumpy duke asked. “Surely he will be executed?”
Arcadius grimaced and shook his head again. “Emperor Licinius escaped. He has retreated upon the Military Highway with a substantial force of his surviving troops.”
At this, the men groaned and muttered. They all knew what this meant. Licinius was headed for Byzantium, a powerful city everyone considered impregnable. It was surrounded on three sides by the sea, and its fourth side had a stout wall built by Emperor Septimius Severus, during whose reign the empire had reached its maximum dimensions. Nobody could besiege Byzantium without also surrounding it by a naval blockade. Even then, it would take a long time to capture such a mighty citadel. Licinius was proving to be a wily and formidable enemy.
“Be at peace,” Constantine admonished his restless men. “God goes before us to fight our battles. We shall prevail. It is only a matter of time.”
The officers had quieted a bit and stopped their grumbling when a messenger arrived and knelt before the emperor. With his head bowed, he offered a wax tablet in a wooden case to Constantine, who took it and began to read. His face showed surprise, followed by grave concern. He handed the tablet to Arcadius. Upon reading the message, his face also grew alarmed.
“Well? What is it?” demanded a highly decorated tribune.
Arcadius grimaced and folded his hands behind his back. “We put one of the captured officers to torture, and he revealed some dire news. Licinius’s admiral, Abantus by name, has taken up a position in the Hellespont. His ships are hidden in coves at the place where ingress into the strait is the most difficult.”
A trap, Rex realized, and he wasn’t alone in this realization. The other men perceived it too. Rex knew Admiral Abantus from a journey he once took with him. Back when Rex was a newlywed, he chartered passage on Abantus’s warship. Rex had found him to be a likable captain, shrewd in the ways of the sea. His crew had even called him “Amandus” because he was “beloved” to them. Why the man was serving Licinius, Rex couldn’t fathom. In any case, Abantus’s shrewdness was about to become a serious threat to Constantine’s navy. The narrow strait of the Hellespont was hard enough to enter without enemy opposition. Its outflow current was strong, making forward progress incredibly slow, sometimes even pinning ships in place as they tried to advance. A surprise attack from the flank at that moment would be deadly.
“My son’s fleet is anchored in the Hebrus estuary at Aenus,” Constantine said. “When word reaches him of Licinius’s retreat, he will swiftly advance on Byzantium—and right into the teeth of Abantus.”
“Crispus must be warned,” Arcadius said. “Today.”
“Rex!”
Emperor Constantine’s sharp tone immediately grabbed Rex’s attention. He stepped forward and saluted. “Yes, Your Majesty?”
“How old are you?”
“Thirty, sir. Thirty-one in about a month.”
“Is there any man here who is younger?” Constantine looked around, but no one spoke up. They were all senior officers. He looked back at Rex. “It’ll be a hard ride, but you can do it. Ninety miles in a day, then probably some infiltration at Aenus because there will still be some Licinians lurking around. Somehow you’ve got to slip past them and get aboard Crispus’s flagship. Then show him this.” Constantine opened the tablet, pressed his signet ring into the wax beneath the writing, and closed it again. After securing the clasp, he handed it to Rex. “Tell the hostler I said to give you the best horse he’s got. You’re going to need it. Farewell, Rex, and may God go with you.”
After bowing to his lord, Rex left the circle of men and hurried to the corral on the western side of the Hebrus. The hostler found him a strong and well-rested mount that could go the distance: a long-legged Arabian used exclusively by the army couriers. Within half an hour, Rex was on the road toward Aenus, heading south on a warm July day. He alternatively walked and cantered his horse at a pace that was brisk but wouldn’t be exhausting. The mare was going to need to conserve her strength.
Fortunately, the highway was straight and level, with few people on it since travelers tended to stay home when unpredictable soldiers were around. Rex rode throughout the day, stopping only a few times to rest and water his mount. A pouch of salted pork, eaten in the saddle and washed down with posca, served as his only meal.
The sun was setting on the distant ocean horizon when Rex arrived at Aenus. Though he hadn’t encountered any Licinians on the branch highway he’d been using, he hadn’t forgotten Constantine’s warning that some enemy scouts might still be in the area. He hoped most of them had retreated down the Egnatian Way toward Byzantium by now. Yet in war, it paid to be cautious. One never knew what was around the bend.
Upon reaching the city’s harbor, Rex found the imperial tax office to be flying Licinius’s flag, not Constantine’s. This region had been Licinian territory for a long time, so the political shift wasn’t going to happen overnight no matter what had happened at Hadrianopolis. Rex gave his horse to a local hostler and paid him to rub down the tired mare and feed her good oats. She had done her job well. Now it was time to move from land to sea.
Since the harbor authorities of Aenus would be of no help, Rex wandered the pier in search of a different solution. A fleet of Constantinian galleys was anchored out in Aenus’s sheltered bay. Most were at rest, with their sails furled and their oars stowed. But a few were starting to move out—and one of these was Crispus’s flagship, the Faithful. It was surely headed for the Hellespont, for Crispus would want to lead the way to the next place of battle. Then the rest of the fleet could follow tomorrow. Little did they know they were headed into an ambush.
