Marius' Mules IV: Conspiracy of Eagles

by S. J. A. Turney

  * * * * *

  “It’s a local farm” Cantorix said, so quietly he was barely audible over the rain. “Still occupied apparently. Though I see no animals, there’s smoke pouring out of the roof hole.”

  Fronto leaned against the tree. For two miles as they had crept through the woodlands they had seen no sign of life, the only mark of habitation was one farmstead that had been burned out, leaving only shattered fences and the blackened stumps of a timber building. In a way, Fronto was pleased to discover life, as the journey had been too tense and silently uneventful for his liking; as if they were tip-toeing across a field where he knew there was a bull hidden in the mist.

  “Anything else?”

  Cantorix shook his head. “Just the smoke from the hearth. I’ve sent the scouts out to circle through the surrounding woods, just in case.”

  The legate nodded. Two of the Ubii remained with them at the heart of the expeditionary force to act as advisors and, if necessary, interpreters. Turning, one hand on the hilt of his gladius, Fronto shook his head, creating a cascade of water from his sodden hair, and gestured to one of the guides, pointing at the farmstead, barely visible through the boles of the trees.

  “What’s your opinion?”

  “Commander?”

  “Is it likely we would encounter an isolated farm still occupied by your people, but without animals?”

  The scout shrugged.

  “Many still trap this side of river. They leave village; go hide when enemy near; then come back when they gone. Could be.”

  The legate sighed. Hardly conclusive, as answers went.

  “We’ll wait for the scouts to check out the woods before we move through.”

  Menenius, standing nearby with wild, nervous eyes, nodded emphatically.

  The men stood among the trees, so many drab shapes blending in with the endless trunks of the woods, the rain here channelled from a constant battering force to form heavy, huge droplets that fell, swollen, from leaves and branch-tips, drenching the men beneath.

  “That’s the signal” murmured Cantorix.

  Fronto, Menenius and Atenos stepped forward to peer between the grey boles to the misty, rain-occluded farmstead. It took them a moment to see the scouts and the legate could only commend the centurion on his eyesight. Barely visible across the farm clearing, two of the Ubii had reappeared and stood, tiny figures in a grey, wet world, waving their arm in the signal that all was clear.

  The officers deflated slightly.

  “Menenius? You and Cantorix take these two scouts and go speak to the farmers. We should be able to get a good deal of information about the current situation in the area. Cantorix: take a few of your men in with you but not enough to frighten the civilians. The others can form a perimeter around the building. The rest of you, with Atenos and myself, will scatter in groups around the farmstead and search, consolidate and hold until we’re ready to move off again. We should be on the enemy archers sometime in the next half hour or so.”

  The officers all nodded and moved off; Menenius hovering all too close to Cantorix for a Roman tribune. Fronto caught the Gallic centurion’s expression at being saddled with the fop and tried not to grin.

  With long-practiced hand signals, Fronto directed the centurions who stayed with him, splitting them into four groups, two of which would move around the edge of the clearing, one in each direction, keeping the woodland under surveillance alongside the scouts, while the other two would spread out across the farmstead and its buildings.

  The legate grinned happily as he moved along the eastern edge of the clearing, imagining the fun Cantorix was going to have with Menenius and the scouts in the farmer’s hut.

  The centurion of the unit with whom Fronto moved pointed to the two scouts standing by the wood’s edge, others having now returned from the shadowed forest. The two men were waving their arms again and gesturing. The centurion, his voice low and in Latin but with a noticeable Gallic accent, leaned close. “What do they want now?”

  Fronto shrugged. “Best check.”

  The centurion nodded, made a couple of arcane signals to his optio and then jogged off forward to the two scouts, who were gesticulating expansively. As the centurion closed on them, the optio strolled up alongside Fronto.

  “The men are separating out into contubernia to patrol the edge, sir.”

  The legate nodded his understanding and squinted through the rain at the scene ahead.

  “Why are they waving like that when we have so many arranged hand signals?”

  He felt the optio stiffen beside him and the man’s hand grabbed his upper arm.

  “Because they aren’t Ubii, sir!”

  Fronto frowned as the centurion ahead reached the two scouts, demanding quietly of them what all the fuss was. The legate jerked back as he saw the tip of the Germanic long sword suddenly burst from the centurion’s back in a shower of blood. Even as the forest’s edge erupted with warriors, Fronto turned to order the musician and signifer to raise the alarm, but too late. A bellow of shocked pain rang out from the farmer’s hut and was immediately joined by others from the various buildings as the trap snapped shut.

  The discordant, horrible Celtic horns rang out and Fronto was drawing his sword and letting his cloak fall to the floor even as he saw Cantorix stagger out of the central hut clutching his side and swinging his sword, bellowing at his men. No sign of Menenius yet. Suddenly, what looked like half the world’s barbarians were pouring from the treeline into the clearing.

  The cornicen a few yards from Fronto was busy bleating out the alarm when the notes became a gurgle, a tribesman’s sword slamming into his neck in a backslash hard enough to snap the spine. In a sudden explosion of activity they were in the midst of battle. The century around Fronto hadn’t had the time and warning to form a defensive line and lacked shields and helmets, the fighting already devolving into a melee of individual duels.

  There was no opportunity to call out a strategy or gather the men to him.

  Turning again, his sword out, Fronto barely had time to raise it and knock aside the blow that was coming for him, the sheer strength of the strike when the blades met numbing his arm and sending shock waves through the joints up to his shoulder. He looked into the eyes of his opponent, a Germanic brute a good foot taller than he, with a dense, unkempt beard and his hair only kept from his eyes by a topknot. The man wore nothing but bronze arm-rings and a torc at his neck, his nakedness no shame or hardship in combat, with designs drawn on his chest in black mud. His eyes bore that crazed, unstoppable look that Fronto had seen before. A man who could only be stopped with a hard death.

  The barbarian drew back his sword and swung again. Aware that his gladius was barely able to deflect the strength of a powerful blow from such a long weapon, Fronto slackened his knees and dropped into a crouch as the sword swung past above him at his former neck height.

  Ridiculously, even as he stabbed up with the gladius into the big man’s vitals, the thoughts that suddenly crowded his mind were of how much his knees ached when he dropped and how much effect his age was having on his combat abilities. Would he really, realistically, be able to lead an assault like this for much longer?

  The roar of the stricken barbarian stirred him from such disturbing and poorly-timed thoughts and he sank back into the crouch, ripping his blade from the man’s bladder, twisting it as it came out. Roaring and spraying blood down onto the legate, the tribesman seemed oblivious to the mortal wound he’d been dealt, apparently entirely impervious to the pain as he rocked back and clasped the hilt of his huge sword in both hands, preparing to bring it down on Fronto in a chop.

  The legate stabbed up again with his blade, severing the man’s thigh artery and slicing through muscle in an attempt to unbalance him. Still standing solid despite the wounds, the barbarian’s sword came down like the falling sky, preparing to end the life of the last scion of the Falerii. Fronto left his sword jutting from the huge, bulbous thigh and dropped, trying to fall out of
the way of the blow, horribly aware of the fact that the falling sword was moving too fast to dodge.

  His last moments of thought were of the missing Fortuna amulet, then of the men he had led to their doom and finally, painfully, of Lucilia standing by the threshold of the newly-renovated Falerius townhouse, the sacrificial bull lowing nearby as she waited for the iron ring he would never be able to give her.

  The glinting blade swept down to split his skull and was met by the upward swing of a gladius and a pugio that crossed to block it. Fronto stared up at the meeting of three blades, a shower of sparks raining down on him, and felt his bowels give just a little at how close he’d just come to being an ex-legate.

  As another sword took the barbarian in the chest and drove him away from sight, the sword and dagger uncrossed and the face of the optio appeared, all concern.

  “You alright, sir? Thought you were a gonner for a minute.”

  “Juno’s arse, so did I” Fronto grinned up at him as he clambered to his feet, knees creaking as he went. He almost fell again as his left knee gave way, painfully twisted.

  “Looks like we’re starting to get it together sir.”

  “We are?” Fronto looked around in astonishment and saw that it was true. In less than half a minute, the men around the clearing had gone from being beleaguered groups into defensive squares, holding their own against the enemy. It was astounding, given the speed of the sudden turnaround and the fact that Fronto had been unable even to think about giving the right signals.

  Signals.

  That was it. He was suddenly aware of the cornu calls ringing out across the farmstead and the circling standards organising the centuries into fighting forces.

  That was a command call.

  His eyes drifted towards the farmer’s hut, where a dozen men stood in a defensive knot around Cantorix and Menenius. The Gallic centurion was leaning heavily on a stick and clutching his side, but Menenius was gesticulating with the centurion’s vine staff while standard bearers and musicians relayed the tribune’s orders across the open ground.

  Fronto stared in disbelief and yet, even as he watched, the century around him reformed in the face of brutal attack, creating an organised defensive line. Their lack of shields was resulting in a much higher casualty rate than one would normally expect but at least now they were holding, rather than being slaughtered in a disorganised chaos.

  He turned to the optio.

  “You got everything under control here?”

  “We’ll manage, sir.”

  With the briefest of nods, Fronto turned and limped at speed for the central buildings of the farm. His mind formed a picture of the optio who had just saved his life and he committed that image to memory so that he could find him later and buy him enough wine to float a quinquereme. In fact, given the fate of his commander, the man would probably be a centurion by the time Fronto got to thank him properly.

  The centre of the farm showed signs of hard fighting. Eight or nine barbarian bodies lay around in the dirt, the rain diffusing the blood from their wounds into the muddy puddles. Three legionaries lay among them, and Cantorix was clutching a torso wound from which blood was blossoming, leaking through the links in his mail. Apart from the inconvenience, he seemed to be ignoring the wound, which was entirely in keeping with the centurion Fronto remembered from the thickest fighting last year.

  The big surprise was tribune Menenius. Standing as straight and tall as one of the statues of the great generals that stood in the forum, the tribune’s sword hung by his side in his right hand, watery blood coating the blade, while he continued to issue commands, pointing with the stick in his free hand.

  Fronto stared as he staggered forward wearily, his knee clicking painfully.

  “Menenius?”

  The tribune spotted Fronto and his face broke out into a wide, relieved smile.

  “Legate Fronto? Thank the Gods. I think we’re going to survive, sir.”

  “How the hell?” Fronto stared at him, using his free arm to take in the whole battle with the sweep of an arm. “What did…?”

  Cantorix straightened, holding his wound. “The tribune shows a remarkable grasp of military strategy, legate.”

  “And he’s bloodied his sword too.”

  The centurion nodded. “Saved my damn life, sir. Fast as a bloody snake, sir.”

  Fronto’s stare turned into a frown. “Menenius?”

  “Sort of lucky with the sword, legate.”

  “Lucky, my arse” Cantorix grinned.

  “My father paid for some very expensive weapon training in my youth” the tribune said humbly. “Not had much chance to put it into action before, but it seems I can remember enough.”

  Cantorix’s eyes told Fronto that it had been a little more than that, but he let it go for a moment. “And you put out the signals?”

  “With the centurion’s advice here.”

  “My arse” repeated Cantorix.

  “I’ve studied the historians, sir. History is replete with examples of how to turn an ambush against the ambushers. It’s all a matter of maintaining control. They expected easy pickings and panic. As soon as we take control the panic passes to them.”

  Fronto glanced around the clearing. The barbarians were melting away into the woodland, their easy victory snatched from them in moments.

  They had won!

  “We were hit hard” he noted, assessing the situation with the practiced eye of a man who had surveyed many a battlefield. “I reckon we lost over a third of the men; maybe even half.” He turned back to Menenius. “But without your help, we’d have been lost altogether. Caesar’ll hear about this, tribune. I may have underestimated you, and I think the general needs to hand out a few phalera for this.”

  Menenius looked down with a strangely shy, boyish smile.

  “I’d rather go unsung, if you don’t mind, sir. Cantorix here deserves the real credit.”

  Fronto, surprised at meeting a self-effacing junior tribune, looked at Cantorix and the man’s expression left him in no doubt as to just how much of this was the tribune’s doing.

  “Perhaps, Menenius, but I’d love to transfer you to the Tenth.”

  * * * * *

  The men of the Tenth and Fourteenth legions jogged through the woods as fast as the terrain and unit cohesion would allow, their cloaks discarded to prevent snagging on branches or entangling in armour and scabbards. All pretence had now been thrown to the wind in favour of speed. Fronto had bound his weak knee with a thick strip of torn cloak, and tried to limp as little as possible, biting his lip against the pain and discomfort. A number of the men, in fact, had used the discarded cloaks to bind or pack wounds that they could run with, including Cantorix who had pushed half a garment beneath his mail shirt and proceeded to completely ignore the wound at his ribs.

  In the light of the enemy’s recent attack and the lack of information about the barbarians’ disposition it had been a difficult decision to make. On the one hand, perhaps this had been an entirely coincidental encounter and this band of warriors was unconnected to the archers at the riverbank, in which case by discarding their disguise they further endangered themselves on the journey. More likely, though, this attack had been carried out in concert with a grand plan and therefore the barbarian archers must know they were coming. In that case speed was now of the essence. To move slowly or indecisively was to allow the possibility that the ambushers would regroup and link up with the archers.

  Fronto swallowed as he ran, tense at that very thought. They would have roughly equal numbers to the archers now that they had lost so many men, but enough ambushers had escaped to make the odds almost three to one if the two barbarian forces joined up. Not good odds when lacking shields, pila and helmets.

  “Sir” barked Atenos, away to his right, ducking through the trees as though born to the forest, his great size apparently causing him no difficulty.

  Fronto angled his run and jumped a fallen branch, almost falling as he landed favouring his
bad knee, and falling in alongside the huge Gaul with a slightly more pronounced limp.

  “What?”

  “The bridge” Atenos pointed off to the side. Fronto squinted and could just make out between the blur of passing tree trunks, through the mist of torrential rain, the dark grey mass of Caesar’s bridge arcing out of the distant mist, rising as it strode towards them. For the first time, seeing it from this side and angle, he realised just what an impressive piece of engineering it was.

  Fronto nodded. “Pass the word.”

  As Atenos turned and yelled for his men to pull closer together and watch for pickets, Fronto moved left and bellowed the order to Cantorix and the others. Menenius, pale and apparently as shaken by what he himself had done as by what had been done to them, moved along behind, his hand gripping the hilt of his gladius as though it might leap from the scabbard and start slicing people.

  Fronto faced forward again, just in time to see movement ahead. A grey shape like the ghost of a warrior disappeared behind a tree, just as another humanoid bulk loomed in the mist and then faded again. Ahead, a cry went up in a deep, guttural tongue, quickly taken up by other voices.

  “Take ‘em fast, lads. Fast as you can, then rally at the riverbank!”

  Ignoring the bulbous raindrops bursting against his face, Fronto hefted his gladius and ran, leaping over fallen wood and ducking the worst of the branches, ignoring the fire burning in his knee and the constant danger of folding up into the undergrowth. His heart pounded as something passed close to his ear with a ‘zzzzzip’ noise and thudded into a tree.