Free Dreaming the Bull by Manda Scott Page A

as well as diminishing their capacity to rebel. Am I correct?”
    “You would as well crucify their children.”
    “It may come to that.”
    The young man turned. He was not, after all, entirely without pity, one could read it on his face, but he was the son of the man who had taken command of a province expecting at least a winter’s peace and had first to achieve it. Sitting, Marcus Ostorius leaned forward, placed his elbows on his knees and made of his fingers a steep-sided tent that tapped a slow rhythm on his lips.
    “You will know that there has been insurrection in the lands north of here in the last half month. Two forts have been destroyed by the Eceni and a unit of the Twentieth was forced to seek refuge here in the fortress. The governor has two choices. He can order the decimation of the two cohorts that fled in the face of the enemy as punishment for their cowardice, or he can subjugate the tribes as punishment for the uprising and as a means to prevent its repeat. Which of these would you advise him to choose?”
    Valerius did gape then. Even Corvus shifted in his chair. With exaggerated deference the prefect said, “Decimation,tribune? Is the governor truly considering this?” Scapula’s reputation, ferocious as it was, had not extended that far.
    Scapula’s only son smiled tightly. “He is. It may be he needs to do both, but I think not. Decimation hasn’t been practised since the time of the Republic. To order it now would send a message to the four legions of Britannia that they had better fear my father than the tribes who would attack them. The sad truth is that both the tribunes and the legates who have command now are new to their posts; it is not certain the men would obey an order to beat to death one in ten of their comrades. It isn’t something we would wish to test in current circumstances. The only alternative is to subdue the local tribes without delay. We cannot fight a war in the west if there is a risk that the east will rise at our back. Camulodunum must be made secure.”
    Camulodunum.
He named it Camul’s dun, home to the war god of the Trinovantes, not Cunobelin’s dun, as it had been before. All of the Romans had done so since they first arrived, as if told this was its name. No-one living had considered it expedient to tell them otherwise.
    Valerius did not correct him now. The perpetual knot in his gut was shifting and changing, coming alive with a flaring admixture of fear and anticipation. Whispers of raw terror traced lines up his spine and with them a spark that blazed bright as the god’s light and promised the blessed oblivion of battle. He had seen too little of that, these last four years.
    Thoughtfully, he asked, “You have two thousand veterans in Camulodunum who have been promised land when they retire. Whose land will they be given to farm?”
    Marcus Ostorius answered, “The Trinovantes’. Oncethe colony is formed, this place becomes an extension of Rome, at which point the natives will no longer have any legal claim to any of their land.”
    He said it as if the facts were obvious, which they were not.
    Stiffly—later, one could think unwillingly—Corvus said, “Valerius … in Rome, only citizens may own land. Only one of the Trinovantes has been made a citizen, and he will retain his steading. The rest of the population automatically forfeits all land rights. It may be that the new governor will choose to recompense the families for their loss but he is not required to do so.”
    The rumours had said as much, but sane men did not believe them. Gripping his hands together to keep them still, Valerius said, “In that case, you have no choice but to disarm the tribes immediately, to crush them completely using utmost force. Those who have half a mind to rebel will do so but if you make examples of them, harshly, the rest may subside. They will loathe us for it, but they loathe us anyway. We have more to lose than their high opinion.”
    He was no longer