Marius' Mules IV: Conspiracy of Eagles

by S. J. A. Turney

  Fronto eyed the bowl of warm, appetising food uncertainly for a moment and then accepted it with a nod and took a mouthful, blowing round the hot meat to cool his mouth. Strange how things turn out, he thought to himself. Never, since that journey from Ostia, could he have imagined himself actually grateful to see the two former Pompeian officers, let alone for them to be trying to look after him.

  “Actually I’m wishing myself several hundred miles south. I know you two are new to this campaign, but I’m starting to get quite sick of it, myself.” He cocked his head curiously. “You two got no pithy remarks about my conduct the other day? No one else seems able to stay quiet.”

  Fabius shrugged. “You lost it. You were damn lucky not to be cut down. I’ve seen legionaries do it when they’ve been pushed far enough to snap. We keep our men drilled under the harshest conditions to inure them to anything so their breaking point is considerably higher than most, but when it does happen, it endangers every man near them. If you’d been one of my men, legate, I’d have put you down myself.”

  “Good.”

  “I suspect there’s a little more pressure on you than on the average soldier, though?” Furius hazarded. “Carbo’s a little concerned.”

  Fronto turned a sour, angry look on the centurion. “What’s that shiny pink bastard been saying now?”

  “Oh nothing like that, legate. He still worries that there will be attempts on your life, and yet you take every opportunity that comes along to stay outside his protection. He’s trying to keep you intact. It’s one of the jobs of the chief centurion. He thinks you’re stuck in a turbulent position, between Labienus’ liberal dissidents and Caesar’s die-hard supporters, too. He seems to think that somehow you’re a bit of both. I’m not sure I disagree.”

  “It’s so gratifying to know how much people discuss me when I’m not there.”

  “Take it as a complement, Fronto. Your men value you too highly to risk you. That’s an uncommon thing for a legate.”

  The three men lapsed into a silence that was instantly filled with the insistent hiss of heavy rain on the shale of the beach.

  “Well the season is almost over” Fabius finally said with a sigh and took a swig of his wine.

  “If we don’t sail soon” Fronto muttered, eyeing the ships, “the weather will trap us on this shithole island for the winter. Don’t know about you but I really don’t fancy that.”

  Furius nodded, but with a smile. “Of course, you weren’t there this morning. It’s been decided. We sail the day after tomorrow on the first tide. We’ve taken all the hostages from the local tribes that Caesar realistically feels we can safely fit aboard the ships, even with the four ships we’ve ‘obtained’ from the Cantiaci. There’s enough impounded goods and loot that every soldier’s going to board his ship weighing twice what he did when we arrived. I hope the vessels can take it. He’s even planning to take the new Atrebate cavalry back with us.”

  “It’s been a lucrative campaign” Fronto sighed bitterly.

  “And that’s bad? The men don’t think so.”

  “If it’s lucrative enough it’ll just push the general into trying something similar as soon as the seasons grant the opportunity. Where will he go next, d’you think? Back here? Back to Germania? Maybe off past Illyricum and into the wilds of the Pannonii? Conquest breeds conquest.”

  He sagged in the chair and spooned some of the hot stew into his mouth, talking between chews. “It’s not that which is driving me mad, though. It’s the damn politics. If it was just the army campaigning for the senate and the Republic I’d be happy with it, but you just can’t separate the politics from the army these days. After all that business with Sulla, Marius and Sertorius, I really thought that the Republic would settle under the guidance of men like Caesar, Pompey and Crassus, but if anything it just gets worse.”

  “That’s why men like us serve in the army, legate, rather than trying to serve in Rome. Better to be given a sword and pointed at a barbarian than to get involved.”

  “But we are involved, Fabius” Fronto snapped, spitting meaty juice onto the pebbles. “In the early days, when we marched out against the Helvetii, I could easily tell myself that Caesar was campaigning for the good of the Republic. And then the Belgae revolted, and then the coastal tribes and others. And we put them down, because they’d revolted against us. It needed doing. You see? There was a reason for everything – until now! Germania, even. I could just about delude myself that our little jaunt across the river was a necessity.”

  “But this?” he swept a hand angrily around at the beach. “This is a publicity stunt, pure and simple. This is his way of saying to Pompey and Crassus: ‘I’m better than you and stronger than you and more important than you’. And saying it to Rome, too. To strengthen his support among the mob, along with the added loot that will help him maintain a stranglehold on the weaker senators and raise new troops, despite the injunctions against him doing just that.”

  “Legate, that’s very dangerous talk. You sound like certain other officers who…”

  “But they’re right! Don’t you see that? I’ve argued against it, but they’re right. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying Caesar’s anything unusual in that. Crassus is doing exactly the same thing. Rumour has it that he’s going to invade Parthia. Do you think he’s spending all that money raising new legions and disappearing into an endless desert for the good of Rome? No! He’s trying to beat Caesar at his own game: popularity and loot. And Pompey? Well he’s just sitting in Rome, tugging strings and building webs and trying to undermine them both.”

  “Fronto…” Furius hissed his warning, his eyes strafing the beach to make sure they were all out of earshot.

  “It’s true, though. I know that you served with Pompey and that he’s a great general. And now you serve Caesar and he is, too. But it’s not their military prowess I’m condemning. It’s their dabbling in the control of Rome itself. This is a damn dangerous time to be a citizen, I can tell you.”

  With a sigh, he ate another spoonful of stew. “It won’t bother you, I suppose. You’ve been given a sword and pointed at a barbarian. And you’re the top two centurions now in the Seventh. You effectively run the legion, so you’ll have your work cut out turning them into a proper fighting force again over the winter.”

  Furius and Fabius exchanged a strange glance and the latter shrugged. “Hopefully. We’re on detached duty for a while, though, so it might have to wait. The men will need to settle into their winter quarters anyway and our training officers can get the work started.”

  Fronto frowned and glanced back and forth between the two men. For a moment some of his earlier fears for the two centurions returned. They were clearly hiding something, but he knew now from experience that with these two, confrontation over anything was hardly likely to be productive.

  It was another added worry, though. In a brief flash he remembered Caesar’s face as they stood talking on the rampart of the nearby camp around a fortnight ago, the general wearing a look of guilty secretiveness as he neatly evaded and parried all Fronto’s more important questions.

  “This whole thing is pissing me off. All this politics.”

  “Then concentrate on what’s important.”

  “Getting home” Fronto said flatly, and then clenched his teeth. “And dealing with Hortius and Menenius.”

  “What?” Furius said, frowning.

  “The two tribunes from the Fourteenth. I’m pretty sure they’re the ones who’ve been murdering Caesar’s supporters. Your legate thinks I’m wrong. He says they’re too loyal to Caesar for that. But I’m still convinced.”

  Fabius stood up and pulled his stool round so that he was sitting in front of the other two, creating an almost conspiratorial huddle.

  “Then you must find a way to be sure, legate; draw them out and extract a confession. Who are the injured parties again? We are not tied to you and may be able to unearth facts that you cannot.”

  Fronto pursed his lips. “Caesar
’s nephew – You remember him from Ostia? He was killed at Vienna on the journey north. Pugio strike to the heart from behind. Then there was Tetricus, my tribune. Took both pugio and pilum blows at the battle in the Germanic camp, and was then finished with a gladius blow in the hospital. Pleuratus, Caesar’s personal courier. Drowned in the Rhenus, tied to a boulder. And they tried to take me out with a slingshot, too.”

  “And that’s all?”

  “All I know of. There may well be more. Given the number of casualties on a campaign like this there could be a dozen more deaths that have gone unnoticed.”

  Fabius nodded. “Then let us pry into the matter, too. And when we return to Gaul and you confront them, you may call upon us to aid you if you wish. I can assure you that we are very capable in such a situation.”

  “I’m not yet sure what I’ll do, but I’ll let you know when I decide. On the assumption we make it back across, that is.”

  Across the beach, they all watched the ships bucking and diving amid the rolling waves.

  * * * * *

  “Fronto! Get over here and help me hold this thing steady!”

  The legate of the Tenth, ashen faced and shaking like a leaf, wrenched his head around, peering into the driving rain, trying to identify the source of the voice. It took only a moment to recognise Brutus, grasping the steering oar of the trireme and desperately straining to hold it in position. Taking a quick glance over the side at the rhythmic rise and fall of the oars, Fronto quickly wished he hadn’t and pulled away from the rail, though his whitened fingers appeared reluctant to let go.

  “Fronto!” Brutus bellowed again.

  The legate looked up at the boiling black and purple sky, lit by occasional sheets of blinding white that cast the entire fleet into an eerie stark monochrome. A fresh flash of lightning temporarily blinded him and he shook his head, blinking away yellow-green blobs until he could see the huge, frightening waves rising and falling again.

  “For the love of Venus, Fronto, I can’t hold it on my own!”

  Another quick glance told him that Brutus was not exaggerating. The swinging steering oar was sliding sideways and despite all Brutus’ efforts, his boots’ nails were leaving score marks across the timber as he was steadily pushed away.

  He quickly glanced about to see whether anyone else could help, but every man on board had his tasks, most of them rowing or trying to hold pieces of the ship together.

  He could have been on one of the big Gallic ships, but he’d decided to risk a trireme just to avoid being closeted with anyone that would either annoy him or bother him. He was regretting his decision about now, only three or four miles from their destination and yet caught in a storm the likes of which could easily dash them to pieces.

  “Pissing Caesar” he snarled as he let go of the rail with some difficulty and staggered along the boards, slipping left and right with the lurching of the ship and the wet timber. “He could have left earlier and not bothered with the damn hostages.”

  Brutus had his teeth gritted in the gale, pushing the steering oar with all his might. Some five feet from him, the trierarch who actually captained the ship lay sprawled against the rail, blood washing down from his head in torrents as Florus – the young capsarius from the Tenth who had treated Fronto more times than he cared to remember – busily tried to mend a too-large hole in the man’s head caused by a splintered oar that had snapped and shot upwards, catching the commander a blow on the way past.

  Staggering across the deck, Fronto fell in with Brutus, grasping the steering oar and pushing it straight once more, trying not to pay too much attention to the sight of a wave that suddenly reared up higher than the ship’s rail.

  “Thank you” the young legate yelled. “We were veering towards that!”

  Fronto glanced off to the side, where he could make out nothing in the roiling blackness until another sudden flash lit up a rearing spur of land, menacing and pale grey in the light.

  “Maybe we should! Can we not land there? Beach the ship?”

  Brutus shook his head. “Rocks. Too many rocks. We wouldn’t so much beach it as sink it. We have to press on for Gesoriacum. We’re nearly there!”

  Fronto reached up to brush the plastered hair from his forehead and then quickly slapped the hand back to the beam as it began to move again. Five miles might as well be fifty as far as he was concerned.

  Despite missing the morning tide due to trouble loading the nervous native horses, Caesar had persevered, pushing the fleet to prepare for the evening tide. They’d managed most of the crossing in reasonable weather – driving rain had now become so commonplace as to be considered reasonable. But then, as the sailors were beginning to feel happier at the approach of the Gaulish coast, the storm had broken.

  The fleet, having been fairly close throughout the journey, was now scattered by the wrath of Neptune, and no sign of any other vessel had been noted for more than half an hour now.

  “We’ll be damn lucky if we hit the right bloody nation, let alone the right port!” yelled Fronto, eying the coastline with distaste.

  “It’s alright, Fronto. This is the land of the Morini. I’ve done extensive charting and research, and I remember these cliffs from our first sailing. Not many more minutes and we’ll see the lights of Gesoriacum.”

  “Not many more minutes and we’ll be pinned to the seabed under a hundred tons of timber” grumbled Fronto.

  “Help me!”

  The two men turned at the sudden panicked call, to see Florus the capsarius desperately trying to hold down the figure of the ship’s captain who was bucking and shaking.

  Fronto looked back at Brutus helplessly.

  “Go on. I can hold it for a minute now, but don’t be long.”

  Nodding, Fronto gingerly let go of the steering oar and, once he was certain that Brutus still had it, skittered across the deck to the site of medical aid. As he dropped to wobbly knees next to the two, he felt his gorge rise and had to swallow down the bile. What looked like a simple head wound with a lot of blood through the rain and distance was considerably more unpleasant up close. A large piece of the trierarch’s skull was missing at the crown and through the white-fringed bloody hole, Fronto could clearly see the pulsing grey mass of the man’s brain, leaking blood. The bile rose again and had to be swallowed back.

  “He’s a goner, Florus.”

  The capsarius shook his head, pushing the captain down hard. “Not yet, sir. If you can hold him, I can get him padded and bound and covered. Men have survived worse. I removed the splinter from his brain, after all.”

  This time nothing could stop the vomit as Fronto failed to prevent the image of that quick surgery surfacing. Wiping his mouth, Fronto reached down and grasped the captain’s arms, pushing him back hard to the now vomit coated deck to stop him leaping about and shaking. Florus nodded his thanks and stood, rocking this way and that with the motion of the deck as he began to rummage in his leather bag.

  “You really think he can survive? The man’s a heap of shaking blubber.”

  “You’d be surprised at the resilience of the human body, legate Fronto. I’ve seen you take a few wounds in my time.”

  Fronto couldn’t help but smile at the optimism in the young man. Ever since his first action against the Helvetii three years ago on a hilltop near Bibracte – after which he had transferred into the medical service – the boy had grown confident and capable.

  “Get on with it, then. I need to get back to the steering oar soon.”

  Florus nodded and tipped acetum onto the wadding in his hand. Staggering across, he dropped to a crouch again and began to gently push the pad into the hole in the man’s skull. Fronto, for all his years of causing such wounds, found that he had to look away, and closed his eyes, gritting his teeth as he strained against the thrashing officer beneath him.

  “Look out!” someone called from further down the deck, but Fronto couldn’t see what it was from here and just had to continue gritting his teeth and pray to Nept
une and Fortuna that it wasn’t the cliffs and rocks getting too close.

  “Oh, shit” yelled Brutus and this time Fronto opened his eyes and looked up, just in time to see a wall of black, glittering water looming over the side of the ship before it crashed down over the rail and across the deck, shaking the entire trireme as though it were a child’s toy in a bath tub. The sound of shearing oars was just about audible in the roar of the water and Fronto felt the captain’s body being torn from him. Desperately, he hooked his elbow round the rail and gripped the wounded officer with all his might.

  It felt like hours that the wave pulled at him, for all its brevity, and when it finally released its hold on the trierarch, Fronto was so surprised that he actually fell back and let go for a second.

  The flash of white light illuminated the deck for a moment and revealed a scene of chaos and devastation. The rowers were in disorder, trying to even out the remaining oars as the boat bucked back and slapped back down level to the water. Men were hauling each other back to their seats and some were even pulling each other back over the side rail. Shattered pieces of timber and oars were being washed across the ship.

  Fronto’s eyes, however, were locked on where Florus had been a few moments earlier. A wad of bloodied padding plastered to an upright of the rail was the only sign that the young medic had ever existed.

  “That was too close” yelled Brutus.

  Fronto ignored him, painfully aware that the man he’d tried so hard to save had stopped thrashing during the wave and was now dead, as was the man who’d been so positive about healing him.

  Almost blinded by the lightning flashes and the pounding rain, inured to the cold and the wet and heedless of the shaking and tipping of the deck, Fronto stood, staggered and slipped across to the side rail, collecting the bloodied wadding and staring out at the boiling, rolling sea.

  For the briefest moment he fancied he saw a figure carried off by one of the waves, but it could as easily have been a trick of the light or his own vision. A voice from further down the deck called out “Man overboard!”