Traitor Read online

  Traitor

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Part Two

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Part Three

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Part Four

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by Geraint Jones

  Copyright

  Cover

  Table of Contents

  Start of Content

  To Dave

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  It is better to die in darkness.

  Better you don’t witness the open wound. Better you don’t see the pumping blood. Better you don’t recognise the lie in your mate’s face when he tells you: ‘You’ll be all right.’

  Such empty promises lay all around me on the mountainside. With the dawn we had come, Rome’s blade, and we had slit the throat of those who had dared to defy the world’s greatest empire.

  The soldiers of the Eighth Legion had taken the hill and the small fort on top of it for the glory of Rome. I could see that glory now. Smell it. It stank of piss, and guts, and smoke, and fear.

  It was not the silent place you might imagine. No, there was noise all around me. The laughter of those who had cheated death. The wails of those who awaited it. The pleas, the prayers, the praise. Battle does not treat every man equally. This day had been the making of some. Torture for others. Many would look back on it with smiles. Others would not look back at all.

  And what of me?

  On this mountain and others like it I had killed while wearing the armour of the legions, but I had not fought for Rome. First, I had fought for brothers, and this day I had fought for answers – though they were answers that I did not want to hear. Marcus, my oldest friend, had been advancing on the fort along the opposite slope. I needed to find him in the chaos. The blood. I needed to know the truth of one death – a death from our past – before I met my own.

  Knowledge of Marcus’s betrayal had ridden with me here from our hometown on the coast, but the acceptance of his act had not. Rather, there was hope. Just the thought of what he had done to Beatha ripped my spirit in two, but I had hoped that some contrition or plea for mercy on his part would allow me to forgive him, my friend, my brother.

  He had offered neither.

  Instead, he had vengeance, but had seen in my heart that I wanted my friend back more.

  And so, he had struck.

  ‘You were never my brother.’

  My hope had departed with him. My passion for war, a flame that had burned brightly since the murder of my beloved Beatha six years ago, was extinguished. I had yearned for combat and the chance to lose myself in battle, but that fire had gutted me.

  I was feared. I was known. I was Corvus the killer. Corvus, hero of the Eighth Legion… or so men thought. In truth, I was no more than the ash that climbed above this battlefield.

  ‘Standard-bearer?’

  I barely heard the words. My eyes were on the eagle that I had carried onto the fort’s low walls. It was as battered and bloody as I was. I called him Gallus – famed chicken of the Eighth – but Gallus had never approved of the joke, and a silver eye peered back at me from beneath its gilded, gore-covered hood.

  ‘Standard-bearer?’

  Why was he looking at me like that?

  ‘Standard-bearer?’ Silence, and then… ‘she’s beautiful, isn’t she?’

  I turned. What sight did I make? My head was covered by a thick, bloodied bearskin that ran down over my shoulders. My own hide was dark from the sun, my eyes rimmed black from war. The muscles of my arms and legs were scarred and knotted like the ropes of the port city where I had grown up, and dreamed of Rome. Dreamed of Beatha.

  But I was not that child now. I was a vision of war itself. A sight to behold, even to a fellow killer.

  ‘It was an honour to fight beside you today,’ the man told me.

  I became aware that I was being watched, not just by this man, but by others. Such is the lot of a hero. I had to find my legs. I had to find words.

  ‘Paulus.’

  He was a centurion. A good one. He was a stranger to me before the dawn. By the time that the sun was atop the mountain, we had stood beside each other in the front rank. Faced death as boulders had been released towards us, leaving bloody red smears through our files. Drill and discipline had carried the day. Roman shields on shoulders had provided the ramp into the enemy’s home. Then, on the wall, it was us who had done the killing. Thoughts of that slaughter returned to me now.

  ‘You saved my life,’ I told Paulus.

  It was true. My mind fixed upon finding Marcus, I had almost fallen to a rebel blade in my back. Paulus had struck first. Without him, I would not have the answers that I had now. Painful answers, yes, but ones that I needed to hear.

  Paulus’s face was thin. Before the fight, he’d looked hungry for battle. Now, he had an appetite for something else.

  ‘There’s wine and whores down in the valley, standard-bearer.’ He was ready for them. ‘I’ve already sent most of my lads back down with the slaves that we’ve taken. Another cohort is going to finish up destroying this place. Would you join us for a drink? It would be an honour for the lads.’

  ‘The honour is all mine.’ That was the kind of thing that a standard-bearer would say, and so I said it. I was too numb to feel otherwise. I moved as a ghost. The blade of betrayal had left me hollow.

  A final look at the bodies all around me. The broken promises. I would be the only dead man who walked down from this mountain.

  The senior centurion stepped forwards, and offered me his hand.

  * * *

  ‘For Rome!’ Paulus shouted. ‘For the Eighth Legion!’

  There was wine in his hand. More of it on his chin, and breath, and tunic.

  The roar of battle is loud, but the din of drunken soldiers is forever a contender.

  ‘To victory!’ a veteran shouted.

  Toasts, libations, cheers and song. Somewhere in the valley, the enemy who had survived the day were rope
d together, spending their first terrified night as slaves. The women would be raped. The men would be beaten, or worse. It had been a frustrating war – a deadly game of hide and seek where the only winners were the maggots that fed on the dead. In such conflict, the unseen enemy was gladly tortured when they were finally caught, and made flesh.

  I watched the soldiers drink. They drank, and laughed, and cursed – even wept. No man is the same in how he celebrates survival, except for the fact that he does celebrate. Perhaps a prayer. Perhaps a whore. Perhaps a proclamation: ‘I wasn’t scared!’

  One after another they came to me. They came to see the eagle. By virtue of being the man who carries it, and with my past deeds mistaken for valour, these soldiers were eager to talk to me. The young ones, and the old.

  ‘Standard-bearer! I was in the front rank with you! Did you see me?’

  ‘Standard-bearer! It was an honour!’

  ‘Standard-bearer, how many did you kill?’

  I should have been grateful that I was known for actions, not words. A nod was usually enough. A sentiment. ‘You did your comrades proud.’

  There were ghosts here, of course, the spirits of the men who left their blood and gore on a mountainside far from home. But victory is a powerful antidote for grief. ‘Yes,’ we said, ‘they died, but they died for something.’ The soldier with guts on his feet, crying for his mother: he died a noble death. He died for the glory of Rome.

  ‘Everything all right, standard-bearer?’

  Yes. No. There were ghosts here. Ghosts that would not leave me. Beatha. My fallen comrades; Priscus, Octavius and Varo – they hadn’t even left us his body. They were ghosts. Ghosts of the valley. Ghosts of the mountains.

  As was my brother. I thought I’d lost Marcus to the reality of war. The truth was that I had never known him. War hadn’t made him a killer. He was born that way, and I had been too stupid to see it. Years ago, when Beatha was killed, I mistakenly ran to the legions for vengeance, turning my blade on brigands and rebels. People who had no fight against me, until I came into their homes and made one. The true villain lay unpunished, and I had done nothing but take my own misery, and spread the flaming embers of it across Pannonia.

  ‘Standard-bearer. Everything all right?’

  ‘Too much wine.’

  ‘Your cup’s full.’

  ‘I think I will retire.’

  I moved. They saw me going. All of them.

  Paulus stood on a cart. ‘Three cheers for the standard-bearer!’

  The roars crashed against me. I could barely stand.

  ‘Too much wine,’ I said again.

  I left the victors.

  The ghosts came with me.

  Chapter 2

  The legion was on the move. Part of it, at least: the Tenth Cohort was to return to base, while the others would continue to hold supply lines open for Rome, and closed to the enemy.

  My actions were automatic. Practised. Muscle memory. I rode with the headquarters element, Gallus in my hand. My mind was in the past; my lips were sealed. This went unnoticed by the staff officers who rode close to me. I was given the job of carrying the eagle because I proved my worth in fighting. I was not expected to think, or give counsel. That role was filled by noble men with noble bearing. They were members of Rome’s ruling class, elite by birth. Though I was a citizen of Rome, I would rarely be welcomed inside of their homes, and never welcomed inside of their daughters. Rome was a hierarchy, and on that ladder, I ranked closer to the people that I killed than the people who told me to go and kill them.

  The current of the war was carrying me to Siscia. There, an army led by Tiberius awaited. He was the heir to Emperor Augustus. That meant little to me. I had never met either one of them, and that Tiberius was heir to the region’s rebellion meant little more. It was Tiberius who would crush the same rebel armies that he had himself raised to fight for Rome, barely six months ago. He was a father killing a son, a very Roman act. Romulus and Remus themselves were cast into a river by their father, Mars. No doubt the god of war would be pleased with what was happening here in these mountains.

  Rome had asked too much of its new subjects in this region. A generation ago, during the conquest, it had taken the fighting men as slaves. This year, when it had asked the sons of those very prisoners to fight for Rome, they had instead turned their arms on those who had made animals of their fathers. The people who lay butchered across Pannonia had been subjects of Rome, and under her protection. They’d had a voice, and a future, so long as it was the same voice and future decreed by the Empire.

  It had not been, and so they had to die.

  This did not sit well with me, nor with Arminius. He was a German prince that served Rome with his cavalry, but he did so with a heavy heart. As a man of principle, and a lover of freedoms, he saw this war for what it was. I didn’t have the mind of a prince, or the words of a noble, but what I had done in the name of Rome just felt so…

  Wrong.

  I knew that war was as natural to man as breathing, but in our towns we imposed laws that forbade citizens to kill each other in the streets, so why could we not do so on a grander scale? Why did it seem that our first and last answer was blood?

  I had tried to talk to my commanders about my misgivings, but I was famed for fighting, not thinking, and they had dismissed me as a simpleton. I was there to carry an eagle and thrust a sword. Only those with nobility and breeding knew what it took to govern Rome and her subjects. I was just there to kill who they told me to.

  I had thought of taking my own life.

  I had come close, the sword point to my chest. I had only to fall forwards, but I had brought so much misery to the world, how could I leave it and face Beatha in the afterlife? Surely she would want me to right some of my many wrongs…

  But how?

  Arminius knew that I wanted more. That I needed an act of contrition. He would have me join the rebels. He would have me take them the legion’s coin, and a legionary’s skill.

  But could I?

  Could I pick up arms against the men who had fought with me on this hillside, or in the valley outside Siscia, when we had routed an enemy ten times our number? That day I had used an eagle for support as I carried my wounded brother, and men had mistaken me for a hero who gave a shit about the glory of Rome. That day had taken me from the ranks, and elevated me to a position I neither cared about, nor had asked for.

  I had never seen Tiberius, nor stood in the presence of an emperor. I had never set foot in Rome, though I had ended many lives in her name.

  No more. I’d killed my last man on that mountainside. I was letting myself be carried along with the legion, letting myself drift, because in Siscia there was something I had to do.

  Then, perhaps, I could free myself of the curse that had been my life as a soldier.

  ‘Sir!’

  Three riders were closing. They reined in close to the commander, a stern-faced tribune. The flanks of the horses heaved. The scouts’ eyes were wide.

  The last time I’d seen them, they had been four.

  ‘Make your report,’ they were told.

  ‘There’s a ford up ahead, sir.’ And I knew what would be coming next. ‘The enemy are holding it.’

  * * *

  The river ran red.

  The commanders of the Tenth Cohort had decided on a simple plan to dislodge the enemy from the opposite side of the river: they would cross it, and kill them.

  ‘Sirs,’ I had suggested, ‘maybe we could find another place to cross.’

  ‘You think we should flank them?’ One of the younger tribunes had asked.

  ‘No, sir, I think we should avoid them.’

  The staff officers had believed I was making a joke, and laughed. ‘Send the Seventh Century,’ their leader had ordered. ‘They didn’t get much of a taste at the hill fort. This fight belongs to them.’

  And the Seventh Century had gone, ready, and willing, and smiling, and snarling.

  Now they were d
ying. Now they were dead. There were no bodies floating in the river – the weight of their chainmail saw to that – but the life blood of many a soldier had spilled, and would now nourish the land of their enemy.

  ‘I want to get up there,’ Paulus grunted beside me. It was the fifth time he’d said it. Ever since the first shouts and clash of steel had carried back to us, the senior centurion of the Tenth had wanted to get into the fight.

  The enemy force holding the ford was a small one, no more than a hundred men, but the river was deep, and they could keep a narrow front. As well as the spears of the rebels, the men fighting in the waters had to deal with the plunging fire of archers on higher ground.

  ‘How many do you think we’ve lost?’ Paulus asked me, then answered his own question. ‘We must have twenty lads down. The tribune needs to push another century in. The rebels are only standing because they can’t see the whole cohort. They’ll run if they do.’

  I nodded but said nothing. Like so much of this land, the ford was in a winding valley that obscured vision for more than a hundred paces.

  ‘He should cram everyone up to the river. That will show them.’

  I didn’t answer. Instead I looked up at the sides of the valley, and the shrubs and trees that covered the hillsides. I judged the tribune’s caution to be worthy. There was nothing to say that the ford was not bait in a trap.

  ‘Have the hillsides been cleared?’ I asked.

  Paulus nodded, then shrugged when I said nothing. ‘I’ll send another patrol.’

  He walked over to the tribune, and my eyes fell on the backs of the men who were fighting for their lives in the river. I was too far away to see their faces, but I could hear the screams and the shouts. The enemy still held the bank.

  Paulus returned. He was smiling.

  ‘Ready for some fun?’

  * * *

  I had decided at the hill fort that I had killed my last man for Rome, but I could no more say that openly than I could spit on the altar of the gods. Frustrated with the lack of progress, the tribune had told Paulus to take forty men and cross the river higher up, so that we might flank the enemy. As I had been the one to suggest this course of action earlier, it was naturally assumed that I would want to be a part of leading it.