The Belgae

by S. J. A. Turney

  Caesar boggled for a moment and then sighed.

  “Do what you have to. Just get me in that city.”

  He turned to the rest of the officers.

  “Have the legions construct a camp, then. Looks like we’ll be here for a while.”

  * * * * *

  Fronto stared at Tetricus.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  The tribune turned back to see his legate and smiled, the moonlight picking out details on his man’s frame, as he collected the massive, coiled rope from the ground beside him. Camp had been completed in mid afternoon and already the ditch and rampart had been begun, stretching half a mile with six feet of depth and height respectively. The finished product would be twice that.

  “Measuring the height of the tower.”

  “What?”

  Tetricus grinned.

  “We need to know the height of the cliffs so we can work out what dimensions the tower must be. I estimated earlier on, but we need a more accurate measurement.”

  Fronto laughed. Only an engineer…

  “So you’re out in the no-mans-land in the dark with a rope. You are a madman, you know that?”

  Tetricus shrugged.

  “Safer at night. This is actually a lot easier in bright sun, but the Aduatuci would probably drop things on me.”

  Fronto blinked.

  “You’re actually going to climb that in the dark and measure it?”

  “No, no, no. It’s very simple. I know I’m five feet and four inches tall, yes?”

  “If you say so.”

  “And I’ve measured my shadow and cut a length of rope to fit.”

  “Err… alright” Fronto agreed hesitantly.

  “So while the moon is at this height, that length of rope is equal to five feet four inches.”

  “Yes?” the legate said uncertainly.

  “So now I just have to get to the base of the cliff and measure the shadow of the cliff and I can work out how tall it is.”

  “If you say so.”

  Tetricus laughed.

  “You’re not a scientific man, are you, sir?”

  “You have no idea, my friend. Come on. I’ll be your bodyguard while you do your sums.”

  The two men strode off quickly and quietly into the moonlit night, leaving behind the lights and sounds of the camp. While they walked, Tetricus frowned as he regarded his superior officer.

  “Would you be offended if I asked you a couple of personal questions, sir?”

  Fronto laughed quietly.

  “Gaius, I think we’ve known one another long enough by now you can stop calling me sir when there are none of the junior ranks around.”

  “Force of habit. Would you mind?”

  “Go ahead.”

  The jagged rocks that formed the massive fortress of the Aduatuci loomed less than a quarter of a mile distant and it occurred once again to Fronto that this could be a dangerous and even foolhardy little jaunt.

  “Your arm’s not getting any better, is it?”

  Fronto shook his head. He’d been trying not to think too hard about that. A future as a one-armed man was not a pretty picture.

  “Perhaps not. I’m not sure. The doctors say that since I can still feel the pain in it, then it’s still alive. They think the…” he tried to think back to what he’d been told. “Like in torsion artillery, where you wind ropes tight? Well that’s sort of how the arm works. The doc said that some of the most important points in the workings have been badly damaged. He said that if it’s still viable that it’ll slowly heal and I’ll start to get some movement back, though it’ll take a long time and a lot of exercise.”

  He sighed.

  “Or possibly there was too much damage and it’s severed inside. Then basically I have a decorative limb. I’m sort of hoping that’s not the case.”

  Tetricus nodded.

  “You’re a very private person, I’ve noticed, legate? No one has dared ask you about your arm before now, I’ll bet.”

  Fronto nodded.

  “Stop looking into my mind… it’s irritating.”

  Tetricus smiled.

  “I think that a lot of people who think they know you don’t know you half as well as they think they do.”

  Fronto gave him a warning glance.

  “Anything else?”

  Tetricus took a deep breath.

  “The woman.”

  “What?”

  “That native woman you left in Noviodunum?”

  Fronto, unseen in the night, rolled his eyes.

  “What about her?”

  “Why look after her only to then leave her behind? You should by rights have thrown her in with the captives. She should be sold in Rome with the rest of them. Most officers would have done that… or killed her.”

  “I don’t like killing girls.”

  “But to protect her from everyone and then just discard her among the Belgae?”

  Fronto looked across at his companion. Tetricus was clearly weighing him up somehow.

  “Go on…”

  “Well.” The tribune took a deep breath. “I hope you don’t take offence at this, but… well, I saw the way you looked at her.”

  “What?”

  “Like a hungry man staring at a cooked lamb. I know that look.”

  Fronto growled.

  “I think this conversation is over.”

  “Fair enough. Any time you want to talk, though, I’ll listen.”

  The tribune turned back to look at the looming cliff, missing the unpleasant glare that Fronto threw after him. Muttering things under his breath that he wasn’t really sure even he believed, he hurried and caught up with the tribune, just as they passed into the shadow cast by the bright moon in the east.

  “Not far now.”

  Fronto nodded.

  “So what? We pin the rope and then walk back to camp?”

  Tetricus nodded.

  “I’ve got to…” he trailed off. “Did you see that?”

  Fronto’s face took on a sudden serious cast.

  “What?”

  He frowned and follows Tetricus’ pointing finger.

  “Shit!”

  Shadowy shapes moved, silhouetted, across the ground between the oppidum and the partially-constructed siege works.

  “These bastards are tricky. We’d best go warn the legions. Obviously they’ve not been seen or we’d have heard the call go up.”

  Tetricus grasped his wrist as he turned.

  “No point” he hissed. “Watch them…”

  Fronto stopped and squinted into the moonlight at the black shapes. Tetricus was right; they were swarming back up the slope toward the oppidum’s gate.

  The tribune raised an eyebrow. Do we go check, or just back to camp?”

  “We check. I don’t like the look of this. The guards at the rampart should have raised the alarm. They must have seen them.”

  Tetricus dropped the length of rope and the two men jogged across the eerie moonlit landscape with its streaks of black, grey and white where poplars cast their shadows. They watched the last few shadowy shapes disappear among the defences on the slope as they came within clear view of the fortifications.

  The torches and braziers of the guards still burned, but there was no polished reflection of helm or spear in the silvery glare.

  “This is not good.”

  The two men skittered to a halt at the near end, where the ditch in front was only two feet deep, with the rampart of discarded earth the same height. Fronto strode purposefully across to the nearest brazier. Soldiers should have been sheltering over it, warming their hands in the night breeze, but no. No men here.

  Scanning the area, he noted shapes on the floor nearby. With a sigh, he strode over, already sure of the guards’ fate.

  Sure enough, only a few yards from the brazier, a contubernium of eight men lay piled atop each other. Reaching down, he rolled the top man aside. Tetricus crouched next to him and examined the man.

 
; “Strangled with a laqueus. From behind, clearly.”

  He examined the pile of men.

  “Same for them all. They must have come out of nowhere and overwhelmed all the guards before they could raise an alarm.”

  “Shit,” Fronto said again with great feeling. “There were an entire century of men guarding this work. All gone without a sound, and not a sword drawn. These Aduatuci are nasty. And clever.”

  Tetricus nodded.

  “We’d best get back to camp and report this.”

  “What about your measurements?”

  “I’ll guess. Come on.”

  * * * * *

  Paetus clenched his teeth. The first day of their journey he had spent tense, expecting at any moment to be hauled aside by the guards and accused of treason against Rome. The prisoners had been roped together in four lines hundreds of men long. There may have been some sort of order based on the tribe of the captive, but Paetus could not tell one man from another; with one exception.

  That first day, as they had been roped together, he had noted that Boduognatus, chief of the Nervii, had been positioned through blind chance only three men ahead of him in the chain. The man had not cast a single glance at him throughout that long walk, but of all the barbarians in this motley collection, Boduognatus was the only one that definitely knew who and what Paetus was, and the only one who would likely turn him over to the Romans. Possibly he was keeping Paetus’ identity as a piece in the game, to play at the last minute and save himself, but that seemed unlikely. The man who had initially wanted to skin him alive for merely being Roman wasn’t the sort of man to play those games.

  No. More likely the chieftain was waiting for an opportune moment during the night when the guards weren’t looking to quietly do away with him. The legionaries wouldn’t care too much. It would be a small financial loss for them in slave profits, but one barbarian was as good as the next to the average legionary. He probably wouldn’t even get buried, just thrown in a ditch when they moved on.

  And so from that first agonising hour of expecting trouble, he had decided on a course of action. Boduognatus must die first, before he got the opportunity for which he was waiting. He had briefly worked on a plan to take the chieftain at night, but the man never seemed to sleep and, since Boduognatus was already looking for a way to deal with him, would be alert during that time. But during the day, all the prisoners experienced was hour after hour of painful shuffling and their minds drifted and switched off, especially if, like Boduognatus, they had slept little during the night.

  So on the third morning, as the prisoners, bound by their wrists only during the night, were lined up for the rope to be passed along the rows, Paetus had positioned himself carefully. The chieftain may have noticed that Paetus was now in the line behind him but, if he cared, he showed no sign.

  The column had started to move at sunrise and continued without a break, churning the mud of the track and eating away at the miles until the watery sun behind the thin clouds with their intermittent drizzle was high overhead. As noon came upon them, a rest was called and the legions were allowed to sit and recover, while the prisoners remained roped and standing. Half a dozen soldiers came down the lines with jugs and baskets, dropping a chunk of bread into their greedy hands and tipping a ladle of water into every thirsty mouth. And everyone drank desperately, and tore into their bread; all except Paetus. The former prefect drank his water without comment as always, but the bread was tucked into his tunic, the pinion around which his plan revolved.

  After perhaps forty minutes of tense waiting, the column began to move off once again. Knowing your enemy and situation was important to a commander and Paetus was a planner by nature. Two more hours of interminable shuffling, as the rain began to fall heavier and heavier and the clouds became dark grey and pregnant with the promise of storms. Two more hours was Paetus’ target. More, and he risked Labienus calling another halt; less, and the prisoners would be too rested and alert. Two more hours into the march and they were at their most docile, numbed by boredom and soreness and routine.

  And now the time at last had come. His teeth clenched tightly, he fixed his eyes on the back of Boduognatus’ head in front and slyly, as subtly as was humanly possible, he reached into his tunic and withdrew the bread he had secreted there.

  Starving as he was, Paetus recognised the simple fact that the warriors around him were all equally hungry and desperate and would likely have less discipline than he.

  Holding his breath, he waited until the nearest guard had looked away at another section of the line, and threw the torn loaf over the heads of the men in front. The item came down amongst the starving prisoners six or seven men ahead. He’d meant to throw it further than that, but the ropes that held him restricted his movement too much for a good throw.

  The effect was everything for which he’d hoped. An explosion of activity followed, as half a dozen captives struggled and fought to obtain the precious food. The guards called the alarm and charged to intervene, but there were four roped lines of men and getting to the centre from the sides of the column was near impossible. As a soldier desperately jabbed lightly with a spear, trying to frighten them into submission, what was a small fracas expanded, almost turning into a somewhat restricted riot. The men nearest the soldier grasped his spear and tried to wrest it from him while, around the place the bread landed, men had now collapsed to the floor, fighting.

  The ropes keeping them bound together lurched forward as the men fell and Boduognatus stumbled in surprise. Paetus, prepared and lithe as a cat, was on him the moment he fell, leaping forward with the rope that connected them formed into a loop that went over the Nervian chief’s head and was round his throat before they hit the ground.

  There was no time to slowly strangle the man. The guards were already beginning to get the minor riot under control; besides, ligature marks on the man’s neck would be a give away and would bring Paetus to far too much attention.

  With a move for which he was largely untrained, yet had thought out over and over for the last two days, he placed his knee on the Nervian’s back between the shoulder blades and yanked hard on the rope. There was a clear snapping noise and the body beneath him went limp. Paetus grimaced as he loosed the rope and returned it to its correct position while he crouched there on the man. The entire attack had taken three heartbeats, as he was acutely aware. The guards had been too busy to see anything, and the prisoners around him were clearly more concerned with the bread and the fight than with this less interesting activity. The only possible problem would be the man behind him who, if he’d been paying attention, would have likely seen what he’d done. It was a risk he’d had to take.

  As the soldiers moved up and down the rows, bringing the prisoners back into line with the occasional well-placed smack of a spear-butt, two legionaries reached down and hauled up the victorious captive, still chewing the last of his prize. The man grinned at them and they rewarded him with a hammer-like blow to the stomach before attempting to stand him upright.

  “You! Up!”

  The legionary gestured to Paetus and the corpse beneath him. As Paetus stood, he drew on every theatrical nuance in his being, feigning incomprehension and arrogant innocence as he stepped back as far as the ropes would allow spreading his hands as he crouched.

  The legionary barely glanced at him, but smacked Boduognatus in the ribs hard with his spear. The body lay limp.

  “Looks like we’ve got a dead one.”

  Another legionary came strolling over as the lines were being straightened to march once more. He crouched by the body and rolled it to the side as far as the ropes allowed.

  “Broke his neck when this prick fell on him.”

  As he began to cut through the dead chief’s bonds, the other soldier turned and delivered Paetus a crack on his shin with his spear, almost strong enough to break his leg. The former prefect staggered and gave the legionary a defiant stare.

  “Hey” called the other man from beside
the body. “Don’t damage him. We’ve already lost one!”

  “Screw ‘em. Brainless pricks!”

  “Your problem, Carus, is that you don’t think ahead.”

  The two men dissolved into a friendly argument as the body was cut free and hauled away from the line. Paetus smiled to himself. The man behind him clearly either hadn’t seen, or didn’t care, or he’d have spoken up.

  He straightened, ready to proceed. Now he was unknown. A miscellaneous Belgic prisoner as far as anyone was aware. All he had to do was keep quiet and unnoticed and he would be taken in bondage all the way to Rome. Of course, when he got there, his life was effectively over, but he’d bought himself weeks of thinking time; likely a month or more. And most importantly, he’d be away from Belgica and Caesar’s army.

  He would survive. He had to.

  * * * * *

  Labienus stood at the gates of the camp. As Caesar had requested, he’d made the fortress as impressive as possible and was pleased with the results. Fronto was right about his engineers; this Pomponius lad that was the chief engineer of the Tenth was really rather good at his job. Even Cornelius, the temporary camp prefect replacing Paetus, who had years of experience in fort construction from the Spanish campaigns, had nodded in satisfaction at the work, clearly impressed.

  In the half day since they had arrived at Nemetocenna, the vexillation of legionaries had been hard at work and had just now, as the sun set, put up the last of the tents, posted the night guards and set the watchwords. They had watched the large, low oppidum that was the home of the Atrebates since they arrived but had not entered yet. Labienus would give them tonight to think about the huge presence beyond their walls and to be impressed. It was vital to his plans that the chieftains were impressed not only with the power of the Roman military, as Caesar had intended, but also with their efficiency, patience and, later, when time allowed, their leniency and pragmatism.

  He was determined, since the chances were low that Caesar would attend, to put this in the best possible light and to suggest to the Belgic leaders that the greatest future for them all was to be part of the great Roman confederacy.