The family of shivers formed into a thorough, spine-tingling shudder as Fronto passed across the threshold of the sacred site and between the carefully manicured trees towards the central oval. It reminded him - somewhat unpleasantly - of walking down a darkened corridor to enter the oval floor of an arena, something he’d done once or twice in his life.
‘Can we just leave and say there was nothing here?’ muttered Palmatus, his horse struggling for dominance over the rider. Even Masgava, a master horseman, and a man Fronto had never yet seen fazed by anything, looked distinctly uncomfortable.
‘Just be prepared. Things could turn horribly ugly at very short notice.’
The Roman force, walking their beasts, moved into the centre of the sacred enclosure and Fronto reined in close to where they had observed the two men. A long rake stood leaning against one of the taller stones, the gravelled ground surrounding the oval ‘arena’ perfectly weeded and raked flat and neat. The taller figure had disappeared. The shorter one was still seated on the stone and Fronto now realised, as they closed on the youth with the delicate lyre, picking out a sad tune and warbling along to it, that it was a girl. With surprise, he found himself suddenly re-evaluating his plans. The death of pre-pubescent girls was not high on his list of priorities, whatever her religion or people.
While his eyes took in every part of the nemeton, a part of him wondered what the tune was, though a quick glance at the Remi and the Condrusi among his party suggested that he’d be better off not knowing. The colour had drained from their faces.
Despite the eerie stillness and the neatness of the place, there was a faint aroma of horse dung that they had not brought with them. Remembering the nature of this shrine, Fronto wondered if Epona had sacred horses in her groves and - if so - were they in one of the huts rather than roaming free among the trees?
Shudder.
‘This compound,’ he announced, his voice cracking irritably, ‘is now under the control of Rome, as is the oppidum of Asadunon across the hill.’
The girl seemed to ignore him completely, continuing her song. The reaction unnerved him more than ever. Quietly, he turned to the nearest of the Remi riders, who looked close to panic.
‘Your druids have girls with them?’
‘Uidluia.’ The man announced, his voice shaky.
‘And for those of us with less command of Gaulish?’
‘A seer-poet, sir. Revered. Blessed. Sacred.’
Well, Fronto thought to himself, he had wanted to test the loyalty and obedience of his new unit, and this looked like it would probably be the strongest test he could ever throw at them.
‘You,’ he gestured. ‘Girl? Where are the others?’
Expertly edging the lyre into the crook of her elbow so that she could continue the tune one-handed, the girl used her other to point to the small temple of Epona on the far side of the oval. He gestured to the capsarius in his group.
‘Damionis, come out front and watch her. Don’t hurt her.’ His words seemed to resonate well with his Belgic men, and they settled their skittish horses as best they could, as the reedy, pale figure of the capsarius rode out to the girl.
Fronto gestured for Masgava and Palmatus to follow him and, dismounting, he led Bucephalus to one of the larger standing stones which had iron rings driven into it, almost as if designed for a hitching post.
The three men continued on foot, crossing the oval and approaching the shrine. The structure was the same as most of the better class of Gallic buildings - of stone courses half way up the door frame, and then of timber and thatch. A step up from the wattle and daub of peasant dwellings, but still poor compared to the great temples of the Roman world. There were no windows in evidence, and the door was shut.
Fronto quickly pictured every possibility, from hidden archers in the darkness to traps devised to behead in the doorway, and approached the door nervously, reaching up with his free hand, the other wrapped whitened around the hilt of his glorious sword.
He swung the door open…
…and had to swallow down the bile that rose to his mouth. The smell of an abattoir hit him in the face, filling his nostrils with the stench of meat and blood and faeces and flies. He took a step forward, coughing up bile, and his foot skidded on the mess that had leaked as far as the door on its way outside. After all, the small temple was at least a finger-breadth deep in liquid.
But the source of that liquid…
Both Palmatus and Masgava gasped behind him.
The two horses, which had apparently been fine beasts, had been killed quickly, with a slice across the throat, but someone - actually at least three someones from the animals’ size - had taken the time and effort to prop them in a pose, slumped to either side of the old woman, their big, sad, dead heads on her lap. The woman had removed her own tongue and then cut her own throat, as was evident from the open mouth, the sheets of blood, and the knife still gripped in her hand.
It was a grotesque parody of the frieze that stood behind her, spattered with their blood, which showed the Goddess Epona with her twin sacred horses by her side, nuzzling her.
Around the floor were the rest of the druids and helpers from the shrine, all suicides, apparently - no warriors like that British nightmare with the crown, just old men in robes.
Getting as much of a grip on himself as possible, Fronto leaned down and prised open the mouth of an ancient, grey-bearded man, confirming his fears. The druid had also removed his tongue before slitting his own throat.
‘What in the name of seven hills of shit happened here?’ Palmatus breathed as he stepped back into the light with Masgava.
‘Defiance.’ Fronto sighed as he stepped out and joined them. ‘Defiance and certainty. They’re informing us they will never be taken alive, and the tongues are to be certain that they will never talk to us, whatever world they find themselves in. Stupidity.’
‘Why the girl alive, then?’
Fronto shrugged. ‘Don’t know, but let’s get her back to the army before…’
He heard a shout and turned to look across the oval arena, his heart sinking as he realised all too late that the song had ended just as they stepped back outside. He had only moved two steps before the dead girl fell from the stone, the lyre clattering across the ground beside her. The capsarius had leapt from his horse and run across, not quite in time to catch her.
‘Why didn’t you stop her?’ he yelled at the rest of his singulares. But he knew the answer. Well he knew it for two answers: None of them had expected it. And even Damionis, close by, had failed to react in time, so entranced was he by her song. And even if they’d had a week to react, the Remi who were nearest would not have stopped her. While he could easily throw his weight around and bring them up on charges, in all fairness, Fronto was not at all sure that he’d have stopped her in the same circumstances. There was something almost otherworldly about the whole event.
‘Saddle up. Ambiorix’s men are long gone and Asadunon is dead to us. We’ll find out nothing here, so let’s get back and hand the good news to Caesar.’ He looked down at Damionis. ‘You can’t help her; or any of the others.’
Reaching out to untie Bucephalus, he breathed deep of the fresh, misty air, trying to clear his nostrils of the stench of death and his throat of the taste of bile. He tried not to look down at the girl’s twisted, leaking corpse as he passed. The sooner this land was under Roman control the better, if only to get rid of the damned, sickening, idiotic and dangerously-unbalanced druids!
* * * * *
‘So what now?’ Antonius sighed, leaning against the gatepost of Asadunon and watching the last of the slaves being led away. The legionaries were occupied removing anything of value from the village, torching the buildings and tearing down the ramparts. In an hour’s time all that would remain to show that Asadunon had existed would be an encircling mound and a pile of carbonised timbers.
The general, his face lined with fatigue - and bubbling, barely subdued anger - looked around at his sen
ior officers.
‘Since there is no sign of Ambiorix or any other Eburones here, we need to turn our attention beyond the Nervii. Their power centre is gone, the place of their treaty is empty and burned. Our trail has run cold and left us at their most distant border empty-handed.’
‘So which tribe is next?’ Rufio asked quietly. Despite having looked over the maps whenever he’d had the chance, the new officer still had only a tenuous grasp of tribal geography.
‘The Menapii,’ Priscus sighed where he leaned beside Antonius.
‘Is that a problem?’ Rufio asked, seeing the weary look on the camp prefect’s face.
‘We’ve gone at them before, but they just melt away into the delta and the forest and swamps like fog on a hot day - which I wish this was, incidentally. Then it’s a matter of hunting down and taking out endless small settlements on reedy islands or hidden in wet woods. Awful.’
‘And for which we need more men,’ Fronto noted. Even Caesar nodded at that.
‘The army will return to Samarobriva and wait for the arrival of the new legions,’ the general said finally and decisively. ‘Then we will have adequate forces to root out the Menapii and find the miserable little Eburone king. But I want the Nervii thoroughly downtrodden first. We have broken them, yes, but we broke them once before, and they simply rose whole again. This time I want them to be flattened and cowed and never able to rise beyond the ground. The army will divide: each legion - along with a quarter of the cavalry and adequate scouts - will take a different route back to Samarobriva, through Nervii land. Every Nervian settlement you find - regardless of size or importance - is to be enslaved, looted and burned. When we meet once more at our base of operations, I want to know that nine of every ten Nervians is face to face either with his Gods or with our slave traders.’
Fronto threw a meaningful glance at Antonius. After Avenna, he had spoken to Caesar’s friend about the concerns of the allied Gauls, and Antonius had wholeheartedly agreed with the problem, promising to speak to the general as soon as the opportunity arose.
Antonius took a moment to notice his look and then frowned in confusion. Fronto mouthed three words at him. ‘GAULS’… ‘BURNING’… ‘TROUBLE’.
Antonius shook his head dismissively, and Fronto ground his teeth for a moment and then took a deep breath.
‘General, if you continue to do unto the Belgae what Rome did to Carthage, you’re going to lose the support of the allied tribes. They grow restless.’
Caesar turned a cold look on him and Fronto rose to the bait, suddenly overwhelmed with the idiocy of his being here if he wasn’t to even be consulted or listened to, let alone given a command.
‘I know! You’re not happy with me. We all know it. It’s not a surprise to any man here, General, but the fact remains that whether you think you need me or not, you do need the allied tribes.’
‘Our forces still outnumber our enemies now, even without the allied tribes,’ Cicero said airily.
‘Not if you add those allied tribes to the enemy!’ Fronto snapped in reply. ‘Then it starts to look a little ropey, I think you’ll find. I only advocate a more restrained approach. As the medicus would say: ‘surgical’. You’d stand more chance of removing a gut worm with a knife than a mallet, if you get my drift.’
Antonius was glaring at Fronto, but Caesar simply narrowed his eyes.
‘I’d forgotten how outspoken and contrary you can be, Fronto, but you do have a point. Very well. You have proved yourself as resourceful as ever so far, so you find me a way to excise Ambiorix with a knife, and I will consider withdrawing the mallet. But if you cannot do so, I will continue with this course until either Ambiorix kneels before me or the entire northeast of this land is a smoking ruin.’
Fronto felt a small hard gem of hope somewhere deep inside. For the first time, Caesar had actually listened to him. Now he had to come up with some sort of plan, and a damn good one, if he was to halt this swathe of destruction sweeping across the Belgae.
‘Now attend your legions, gentlemen.’ The general straightened. ‘We march as soon as the slaves and booty are on the move. All proceeds when we return to Samarobriva will be divided as spoils among the men. Your legions will appreciate this, so bear it in mind as you pass like a cleansing fire through the Nervii. Every sestertius you tear from those benighted settlements will improve the mood and loyalty of your men. Now: off, gentlemen.’
As Caesar and the other officers dispersed, returning to the staff group or their individual forces, Antonius strode across to Fronto.
‘You have Gods’ awful timing, Marcus.’
‘You said you would speak to him!’ Fronto snapped in retort.
‘And I did. But the more I thought about it, the more I realised that the best way to help the Condrusi of your scout friend is to remove the threat from their border. If we keep going as we are, whatever their dissenters think, we’ll have removed the Nervii from the map, and that will give the Condrusi some breathing room - a cowed Nervii to the north and a preoccupied Treveri to the south, courtesy of Labienus. And if Caesar moves on to the Menapii and then the remains of the Eburones, we’ll have freed the Condrusi from danger entirely. Then we could even smash the Treveri.’
‘You’re talking about genocide here, Antonius, and of more than one tribe.’ The smell of wine on the senior officer’s breath was strong, and possibly even the stench of Gallic beer? When had he found the time? They’d been marching all day and then fighting! Fronto was impressed in a slightly worried way, Even at the times when he was deepest in the arms of Bacchus, he couldn’t have found the opportunities Antonius did. Probably wouldn’t have been able to stand, either!
‘The genocide of more than one enemy tribe,’ corrected Antonius, showing no sign of inebriation, ‘freeing up room for our allies.’
‘And there’s no guarantee that Caesar burning every house in the north will get him Ambiorix. In fact it’s more likely to push him into hiding or across the river to the dubious, white, flabby bosom of the Germanic peoples.’
‘Caesar is the one who cares about Ambiorix, Fronto - not me. My job is to make this campaign a success for him, and crushing these rebellious Belgae is part of that. If you want to go rooting out his obsession like an ‘attack ferret’ that’s up to you, Fronto, but I’m going to keep this war on course.’
With a last defiant look, Antonius turned and stormed away after Caesar.
Fronto spotted Masgava and Palmatus with the rest of his men standing not far away, looking tense. Quickly, once more grateful that his knee was strong again and his marching speed better than he could remember, he strode across to them.
‘Alright you two. Start thinking of any way we can get to Ambiorix. I want to come up with a near-to-fool-proof plan before we reach Samarobriva so that I can present it to Caesar. If we want to stop Gaul burning, we need to think hard and fast.’
‘Already way ahead of you there, Fronto!’ Palmatus said, winking at Masgava.
‘Do tell.’
‘We’ve been thinking on something along those lines,’ Masgava admitted. ‘Sometimes a large force can be a handicap. After all, you wouldn’t send a bull down a hole to catch a rabbit, would you?’
‘I just got called an ‘attack ferret’ by Antonius. Be careful how you proceed with this conversation!’ Fronto warned with a dark look.
‘And when we get back to Samarobriva,’ Palmatus added, ‘you might note a Gallic theme to your singulares.’
Fronto frowned. He had an inkling what they were suggesting, and it was a thought that had been rattling round his subconscious too. ‘Let’s go see Galronus. If you’re suggesting what I think you’re suggesting, he could be of great help.’
Chapter Eight
‘What are you two looking at?’ Fronto asked wearily. He’d only been back in Samarobriva along with the rest of the army for a matter of hours, and everything seemed to be utter chaos. In Caesar’s absence, the three legions levied in Cisalpine Gaul had arrived - Pompey’s
First, the reformed Fourteenth, and the new Fifteenth - and their commanders had already put their stamp on the quarters in the commander’s absence.
‘Shocking,’ Priscus shook his head. ‘No organisation. Look at the way they’ve pitched.’
Fronto shook his head. He could see nothing wrong, but Priscus’ term as camp prefect had given him an extra level of grumpy perfectionism that Fronto could hardly believe found room in the man’s head, given how it already overflowed with ire, irritability and gloomy pessimism.
‘Looks textbook legion procedure to me.’
‘For some situations, but we’ve learned over long years in Gaul to tailor the camp to current need. Regardless of tradition, we pitch the centurions’ tents uphill from the rest and the troublesome bastards at the bottom because it rains in Gaul every quarter of an hour and the rain should respect rank. And they’ve taken the tent space of the auxiliary cavalry, which might seem fine to good upstanding no-lip, fat-necked, dung-brained patricians, but might piss off the commanders of the only real cavalry we have. And they’ve dug their latrine by that copse of trees with the big ‘menhir’ stone in the middle. It doesn’t take more than a rudimentary thought process to recognise that as a native shrine. Gods, they have them in the south, in Roman land. When the princes and chieftains in the cavalry see that they’re going to drown a few gleaming, bronzed patricians in that trench!’
Fronto nodded in wonder. He’d missed all three issues and Priscus was absolutely right that they would cause trouble. ‘The new fellas can’t be expected to know these things, Gnaeus.’
‘There was a caretaker garrison here who should have made it clear. Do you see what happens to things when I’m not around to nail a few arses to walls?’
Galronus, next to the prefect, nodded wearily. ‘I’ll talk to the auxilia and try and keep tempers calm until you can sort it out with the general.’
Marius' Mules VI: Caesar's Vow Page 19
