Marius' Mules IV: Conspiracy of Eagles

by S. J. A. Turney

  Menenius blanched again. “I could have stopped that. I just do not know how I can apologise enough. Had I stood when I saw them or shouted a warning, you could have moved. But I stayed frozen. You fell heavily and I realised then that they would kill you.”

  He lowered his eyes to the rattling boards of the cart beneath him. “Something happened. I’m not sure what. It’s all a bit of a blur, then. I think they spotted me before I stood, but possibly not. I drew my sword and… and… well it’s all a bit confused. Next thing I knew I was being lifted up by legionaries, and my eyes wouldn’t focus.”

  Fronto nodded again. “It would appear that your courage comes in fits and starts, tribune. The man who turned the tide back at that farmstead is the same one as the man who saved my life. But that man seems to be locked away inside a gentler, more peaceable man. I can’t say I’m not grateful, mind.” He took a deep breath. “But that dichotomy is no use in command of a legion. I would heartily recommend that when the campaigning season ends, you do not push to retain your commission.”

  Menenius smiled weakly. “I never had that intention, legate. I have already spent this summer planning my next step up the cursus honorum. My family wanted me to excel in the military. They pushed for me to repeat my year and try to shine, but it is time to resign. I know that now.”

  “And don’t let that knob Plancus assign you to anything like that again. Stick to shouting at people and making lists. In the meantime” he glanced at the wagon’s driving seat, where the Gallic-born legionary was studiously examining the rump of the ox before him, “don’t repeat this story to anyone. Just tell them that you don’t recall what happened. It’ll do you no good in Rome if that story gets out.”

  The tribune nodded gratefully. “Thank you, legate.”

  “And thank you. It seems that I owe you a life somewhere down the line. Let’s pray to Mars that it’s not necessary to collect on it.”

  Leaving a slightly relieved looking tribune, Fronto strode forward again at a faster pace. Slowing briefly, he caught the eye of the legionary driving the cart.

  “What’s your name, soldier?”

  “Catumandos, sir. Third century, seventh cohort.”

  “Well, legionary Catumandos, if any hint of that conversation I just had with the tribune ever surfaces again, I will know exactly where to look. It’s not unknown for an unwary legionary to drown in a latrine trench. You get my drift?”

  The soldier nodded, stony-faced. Fronto gave him a long moment of glare, just to push home the point, before strolling off back towards the tents of the settled legions.

  Good. Cathartic. That was exactly what he’d needed to hear. So long as he never found himself sharing a command with the man again, everything would go swimmingly.

  And now to address the other thing that had been filling his thoughts on the journey before dropping in on Cantorix at the medical section.

  * * * * *

  “Nice dagger.”

  Centurion Furius turned to face Fronto, his face betraying no surprise, his eyes flinty and hard. The legate of the Tenth could hardly fail to notice the way Furius’ hand dropped to rest on the pommel of his gladius in an automatic reaction.

  “Legate?”

  “I said ‘nice dagger’. Shiny. New, is it?”

  The centurion’s jaw firmed. “As it happens, yes. Can I help you in some way?

  ”Costs a couple of coins, doesn’t it. And Cita can be a bit stingy with replacements. Bet you had to shell out over the odds for that. Must irritate you.”

  Furius squared his shoulders and looked the legate in the eye. “Is there a reason you’re keeping me from my duties, sir?”

  “Just admiring the dagger. Lost your old pugio, did you?”

  “If it’s of any great interest to you, it broke during the battle at the Germanic camp. I requisitioned a new one the same day. I don’t let any man attend duty with missing kit, let alone doing so myself. Are you quite happy now?”

  “Tough luck, that” Fronto replied with a grin. He was starting to enjoy himself, and the more irritated Furius became, the more his own mood improved. “I mean, the pugio’s a strong weapon. Damn hard to break that blade. Tried to prise off a pilum head with it, did you?”

  Furius simply glared at him and Fronto ploughed on, smiling.

  “I mean, I’ve had my pugio since Caesar was a simple quaestor in Hispania and I was on his staff as a junior officer. Used it for the first time in a riot in Numantia, long before Caesar’s proprietorship and my command in the Ninth. I’d say I’ve used it more than a thousand times since then, and it’s still as strong as a vestal’s underwear and has a wicked edge.”

  “If you really must know, legate, my pugio snapped because I punched the bloody thing through a chieftain’s bronze chest plate. I got it stuck in his breastbone and the tip snapped off while I was trying to remove it. I might have been able to free it, given time, but I was sort of busy fighting off two more of the bastards with just a gladius. Some of us fought like soldiers there, rather than poncing about on a horse.”

  All the humour drained from Fronto in a breath. His eyes narrowed.

  “I know your sort, Furius. You and that friend of yours. When I have proof of what you’re up to, you’ll wish you’d been cut down in battle.”

  The centurion simply smiled coldly. “Permission to speak out of turn, man-to-man, sir?”

  “Granted by all means.”

  “Why don’t you just fuck off, Fronto? You spend all your time swanning around with a vine staff jammed up your arse, half-drunk and half-dazed. You’re just an impediment to proper military organisation. You’re too hard-arsed to support those liberal, girl-like officers who want Caesar to rein his army in and ‘talk it out’, but you’re too weak and disobedient to serve properly and carry out the orders given to you by your superior without questioning every angle and complaining at it all.”

  Fronto opened his mouth angrily, but Furius jammed a finger into his chest, almost driving him back a step.

  “No. You gave me the right to speak. Your sort makes me sick. You have the skills and the courage to be a bloody good officer and leader of men. You could be a Pompey. Or a Lucullus. Or even a Caesar. But you’re just too indecisive and wishy-washy. You have flashes of brilliance, I’ll admit. Your little stunt across the river was good and I’d have liked to have been there. But in between, you continually sod it all up and drink away your effectiveness.”

  There was a pause – a moment’s silence – and yet Fronto, standing there with furrowed, angry brow and mouth open ready to retort, found himself somehow unable to speak, disarmed by words.

  “See? You can’t even put me in my place.” Furius took a deep breath. “Now I have duties, like most centurions. I have things that need doing. You don’t like me. I don’t trust you. But we serve in different legions and we’d never even have to cross paths if you didn’t make it your life’s work to pester and accuse me. So why don’t we agree never to speak again, and I’ll just wait patiently until the end of the year when, if rumour in the Seventh is to be believed, you will lose your commission through your constant disobedience, and piss off back to Rome to swagger around the gutters there.”

  Without waiting for a reply, which Fronto, almost shocked with anger, appeared totally unable to supply, Furius turned and strode away, vine staff jammed beneath his arm.

  The legate stood and watched him go, turning over everything that had been said in his mind.

  Rumour was that he was going to be decommissioned? Why?

  Somehow, that small unpleasant revelation almost obliterated everything else the man had said. Should he speak to Caesar?

  He stood still in the warm night air for a moment, listening to the general murmur of a camp at rest and the distant sounds of the civilian settlement going about its life.

  A deep breath totally failed to calm him or settle the twitch he seemed to have suddenly acquired beneath his right eye. Grumbling quietly, he strode off back toward the p
raetorium.

  The cavalry officers of Aulus Ingenuus, Caesar’s bodyguard, were positioned around the command section of the main camp, by the important tents as well as in a general perimeter, their backs ramrod straight, eyes alert. Two of them twitched for a moment as Fronto approached, preparing to block his path but, recognising him as one of the staff officers at the last moment, they saluted.

  “Password, legate?”

  Fronto had to pause for a moment and dredge his memory. “Artaxata. Why Priscus needs to keep dredging up the names of eastern shitholes for passwords is beyond me. I think he just does it to annoy me because he knows I’m bad with geography.”

  The two cavalrymen smiled and thumbed over their shoulder.

  “In you go, sir.”

  “Is the camp prefect in?”

  “He’s in his tent, sir.”

  Nodding his thanks, Fronto strode off towards Priscus’ tent, gesturing at the guard standing beside that doorway. The legate himself had never bothered with a personal guard around his command as most senior officers did, but the praetorian cavalrymen had extended their remit from the general himself to the entire command section. Against all expectations, Priscus seemed to like it.

  “Fronto, from the Tenth” he said to the cavalry trooper.

  The man saluted, rapped on the tent’s doorframe and ducked inside. Fronto heard his name being announced in a muffled voice within, and the barked command to let him in. Priscus sounded in a worse mood than usual.

  Thanking the soldier, Fronto ducked inside. Priscus stood behind his large desk, leaning on it with his left hand, his right curled around a solid wooden wine cup. He looked up at the new arrival and Fronto caught the look of desperate aggravation within his friend’s eyes.

  “Bad day?”

  Priscus nodded and slumped back down to his seat, the wine slopping in the cup. “You have no idea. And you?”

  “Bet mine beats yours.”

  Priscus’ brow rose and Fronto strode across and dropped into one of the two rickety wooden chairs opposite the prefect. “I’ve discovered that I was saved from gruesome death by a wet little coward with no experience who still somehow fights better than me. I’ve been told I’m useless, drunken and old – more or less – by a centurion who, while he may be a prick, could just be right. And now I hear there’s a rumour that I’m to be sent back to Rome at the end of the year. Top that.”

  Priscus grinned.

  “Good. Well, the tribune saved you and, whatever you think of him, you have to be grateful for that. You are old. You’re older than me and I feel damned ancient these days. And you do drink considerably more than the others – myself excluded of course. Did you know that Cita keeps an emergency stock of amphorae that he calls his ‘Fronto’? ‘Useless’ I’d be tempted to argue with, though I’ve seen you trying to ride a horse, so I might not. And I can squash that rumour for you. I have the list of officers whose tour is up by winter, and your name’s not on it.”

  “Good. But it’s still been a bad day. What’s got you so bothered, then?”

  “Other than the standard camp crap, added to all the extra work provided by the presence of a civilian population? Caesar’s got me handling all the bloody merchants that he’s called in, and setting everything up for Volusenus.”

  “What merchants? Who’s Volusenus?”

  Priscus slid the jug of wine across the table, indicating the three spare cups at the side. Fronto eyed it suspiciously for a moment, wondering how much of Furius’ invective stream he’d be proving right if he poured that drink and in the end giving up and doing so anyway. As if to cheat the centurion, he gave it an unusually healthy dose of water.

  “Go on.”

  “It’s not general knowledge, but Caesar’s had the call out for merchants who have knowledge of Britannia. He had local scouts sent out before we even left the Rhenus to gather information. Most of them, and the scouts, will be waiting for us at Gesoriacum, but a couple of the more enterprising ones have come here and met the column, hoping to get the choicest reward for their help.”

  “So you’ve been collating all their information?”

  Priscus’ look was rather sour. “It didn’t take much collating. They’ve given us some scant knowledge of the tribes and the geography, but they all seem to disagree on everything but the most basic points. And on the one thing they’ve all emphatically stated.”

  “What?”

  “That it’s too late in the season for safe sailing to Britannia. That if we attempt to cross after this month we risk the fleet being torn apart and sent all over the ocean with the army drowned. Apparently the autumn currents here are bloody awful. They all think we should wait for spring.”

  “But Caesar doesn’t?”

  “Correct. Unless we get a lot more useful information at Gesoriacum – and that looks exceedingly unlikely if this lot are any indication – the general’s going to send a scout across to check it out. Hence: Volusenus.”

  “Still don’t know him.”

  “He’s senior tribune of the Twelfth. Distinguished himself at Octodurus apparently. Anyway, he’s apparently got history with ships, so Caesar’s planning to send him across to Britannia in a bireme to fill in the gaps in the knowledge and clear up any points that we’re not certain of. Can’t say I envy the poor sod. But I’ve had to have everything ready for him on the assumption that, as soon as we reach Gesoriacum, he’ll be off to explore.”

  Fronto glanced down at the desk and noticed for the first time the hastily drawn map of the Gaulish coastline, marked out in charcoal on a piece of expensive vellum. A short distance from the town marked ‘GESORIACVM’ a wavering line of grey denoted the coast of the land of the druids: Britannia. A shudder ran through Fronto which chilled him to the bone.

  “No. Can’t say I envy him either. But then we’ll all get the chance soon enough. In three days we’ll be at the coast. Then we’ll just have time to recover and shave before Neptune gets to drag everything I’ve eaten for the last two weeks out of my face and make my life a living Hades.”

  As Priscus took another pull on his drink, Fronto gazed across the map, trying to decide what would be worse: the journey or the destination.

  * * * * *

  Gesoriacum was everything that Fronto feared it would be: maritime-obsessive. Absolutely everything about the place was centred about its mercantile shipping, its port and its fishing industry. The whole place smelled of dead, landed fish and brine – a fact that had caused Fronto’s first vomiting session before they’d even clapped eyes on the rolling waves. He could remember a time when he’d enjoyed fish as a meal and slathered the ‘garum’ fish sauce from Hispania over everything he ate – not so now.

  The population seemed to consist almost entirely of fishermen, fish-sellers, fisher-wives, retired fishermen relying on their fisherman families, and inns with names like ‘Drunken Codfish’, ‘Thundering Barnacle’ or ‘Jolly Fisherman’. It was almost as though the Gods had set out to create a native settlement perfectly designed to keep Fronto at maximum smelling distance.

  The army had camped on the high point at the landward side of the town, forming a solid fortification that loomed over the native settlement, with a commanding view. The increased altitude and distance from the docks were the only reason that Fronto had remained a pale grey-pink colour for the last week, rather than tipping into the grey-green tone he’d gone whenever he’d had cause to visit the waterfront. At least on one such visit he’d managed to secure a new ‘Fortuna’ pendant from a merchant. It looked decidedly like a bandy-legged Gallic fishwife to Fronto, but the merchant had been insistent that it was the Goddess of luck. Somehow he’d rested a little easier wearing it, for all its misshapen ugliness.

  Barely had the legions begun the ditches and ramparts before the veritable army of native fishermen, traders and opportunists had descended on the camp, drawn by promises of a healthy reward for any pertinent information they could supply concerning the land of the druids across the oc
ean. Their idea of pertinent had apparently differed greatly from Caesar’s, and many had left the camp with a scowl of discontent and empty pockets, glowering at the newly arrived and heavily armoured soldiers that reminded them so heavily of the armies that had passed by this way a year before, ‘pacifying’ the north coast.

  A few interesting titbits had floated to the surface though, two of which had helped mollify the dreadfully unhappy Fronto: Firstly, three different men, all of whom had good credentials, had confirmed that the centre of druidic power in that horrible island was more than a fortnight’s travel to the northwest. This was welcome news to every man in the army. The druids had caused enough trouble in Gaul; their religion, power and practices were still largely unknown and frightening, and Britannia was the home of that power. To know that the chances of an encounter were so distance-dimmed was a great consolation.

  Secondly, the most warlike of the native tribes all lived in the north of the land. While those tribes to the south could be expected to be every bit as dangerous and duplicitous as the Gallic, Belgic or Aquitanian tribes; the talk had always been that the worst tribes of Celts had lived in Britannia. Nine-foot-tall cannibals with painted bodies, supposedly – reports delivered by enough trustworthy scholars that it was hard to refute. But to know that these tribes of monsters lived far in the north made a southern coast landing a little less worrying. Even Caesar, who had denounced such descriptions as preposterous, had donated generously to those visitors who had confirmed the vast distances between the south coast and these awful dangers.

  Other details had come out too: the nature of the coast, with its intermittent areas of unassailable cliff and the location of several strong rivers; the swampy areas that lay along the coast to the north, and the names of a number of local tribes.

  All in all, the information had been interesting and some of it of use, but little was detailed enough to warrant adding to the map of which Caesar and Priscus kept tight control.