Marius' Mules IV: Conspiracy of Eagles

by S. J. A. Turney

  “Reform!” he bellowed, bracing himself.

  As the axe reached its apex and began its extended descent towards the Roman officer, Brutus felt the press of men around him suddenly give as they shifted into position and he found himself almost manhandled back out of the way as a legionary stepped in front of him and brought his shield up high. The axe buried itself in the wood, becoming lodged only six inches from the boss. Grimly, the legionary heaved the heavy, cumbersome shield and trapped weapon to the side a few inches – enough to drive his gladius into the pit beneath the man’s extended arm.

  Not even waiting to see him die, the soldier pulled the blade back and closed the gap. Some of the weight on his shield fell away as the warrior expired and released his grip on the axe, though the weapon itself remained wedged.

  Brutus, his heart pounding a tattoo in his chest, stepped back a few paces and took stock. The seething mass of the Morini tribe were now held back by a thin shield wall. It would do for a while, but not for long.

  “On my command, the line will begin to withdraw in good order up the street towards the fort.”

  He took a deep breath and raised his voice enough to double as a signal for Fronto back up the street.

  “On the count of five, strike and then take two paces back and reform.”

  “One… two… three… four… five!”

  En masse the thirty men angled their shields and stabbed out into the mass of howling Gauls, took two steps back and locked shields again.

  “Good!” Brutus bellowed. “Now we repeat the move until we reach the fort. And I can’t afford to lose the line, so any man who dies will get docked a week’s pay!”

  A laugh rippled through the desperate defence despite the situation, and Brutus straightened.

  “Here we go… One!”

  Further up the street, Fronto heard Brutus’ shouted commands and sighed with relief. They might pull themselves out of this after all. Watching the approaching men who had broken from Brutus’ force, he felt a lurch of worry again as he realised how few soldiers his fellow legate had left himself to bar the way to the enemy.

  “You men” he addressed the legionaries guarding the windows. “You will hold position until the rearguard reaches you and then fall in and join their line as they pull back.

  Pinching his nose, he looked down at the blade hanging from his hand. He’d not even drawn blood yet. Was this what it felt like to be a normal commander? Ordering men around with no personal involvement? Blinking, he refocussed on the large force of soldiers slowing as they reached him. No time to muse on the nature of command now.

  “You men come with me. I want you formed into an advancing shield wall. The bulk of the enemy may be behind us, but there could yet be Gauls between us and safety. Someone was trying to burn the gate, after all. Form up and prepare to advance in good order.”

  The legionaries, a confused mix of the Seventh and tenth, quickly formed into a column ten men wide, the front line holding their shields up ready to meet any resistance.

  “Advance at the steady march.”

  With the slow, determined tramp of a marching legion, the column of protected and armed legionaries began to stomp up the road towards the camp. Up here, the houses of the Morini townsfolk – rebels? – petered out with no archers in windows threatening them, and were replaced by small orchards, vegetable gardens, animal pens and patches of waste ground.

  Closer they moved until finally the path curved slightly and gave them their first clear view of the fort. Fronto grinned. Rufus had really gone to work on his fortifications. An extra ditch had been dug around the fort, and the joins between it and the new settlement ramparts had been severed and cleared, the ditches extended through them.

  The smoke that had appeared to be from an attempted burning of the gate proved instead to be the charring, smouldering remains of the Morini’s attempt at creating a vinea – a protective mobile shelter – that they’d apparently used to cover a battering ram. The ram itself was now a huge, black cinder in the centre of the smoking pile, hissing in the rain.

  The fort had held and held well. The amount of churned mud and destruction around the outer ditch and the bodies piled within it suggested that the siege was probably in its second or even third day now.

  “Come on, lads. We’re clear” he shouted to the legionaries.

  A few figures appeared at the top of the gate, on the parapet. A man with a transverse crest on his helmet, visible in the light of a guttering torch, turned and bellowed out commands. Fronto couldn’t quite hear what the man had said, but the words ‘Roman’ and ‘relief’ were definitely among them.

  The fort’s gate began to swing open and the duty centurion and his men issued out in full battle array, looking about as relieved as Fronto had ever seen a man. The advancing force came to a halt and Fronto strode out ahead.

  The centurion saluted and grinned. His face was streaked black with soot and dark circles hung under his eyes.

  “It’s very good to see you, sir. Can I ask what legions you bring?”

  Fronto sheathed his sword and coughed quietly.

  “Just four centuries of the Seventh and Tenth returned from Britannia, I’m afraid. We’re not so much a relief force as fellow prisoners.”

  The centurion tried to hide his disappointment, his face hardening. “Then it’s good to see you back, sir. Legate Rufus is in the headquarters building. I assume you’ll want to see him straight away?”

  “I will. Legate Brutus is on his way up the hill with the rearguard, followed by a sizeable force of Gauls. Get these men fell in with your own and prepared in case they decide the night can stand another attack yet.”

  The centurion nodded as Fronto strode in through the gates.

  * * * * *

  “Legate Rufus sends these with his compliments, sir.”

  Fronto turned, taking some care on the slimy timbers of the rampart walkway, to see an optio from the Ninth saluting him, two legionaries behind him carrying a bundle of javelins some twenty-odd in number, bound into a sheaf with leather ties.

  “Thank you. I suspect we’ll need them. Looks like they’ll coming back for another try any time now.”

  The two soldiers struggled up the ramp to the parapet with their burden and then upended it to rest against the palisade wall, saluting as they caught their breath before turning and jogging back the way they’d come. The junior officer threw out another salute and marched back to his duties.

  Geminius, a hard-bitten ginger haired centurion with a flat nose and a hare-lip that showed failed stitch-marks, grinned his ugly grin along the palisade.

  “Shall I distribute them, sir.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Fronto watched Geminius as he began the task. The centurion was one of the two from the Tenth who had disembarked with him last night, the other having fallen foul of a particularly vicious sword wound in the retreat up the street from the port, and currently waiting to greet Hades in person in the makeshift hospital. The wounded centurion’s optio had only been made up in Britannia and was, as yet, not ready to take full command and so Geminius had combined the survivors of the two centuries into one outsized unit that had been given the northeast sector of wall.

  “Lounging about again?”

  Fronto turned at Priscus’ voice, too tired to anger – he’d found that since his explosion of untamed rage in Britannia anger was slow to come and less common, or possibly he was deliberately making it so. He’d had less than an hour’s sleep since leaving Britannia and the fatigue was beginning to wear him down. The rain had stopped at dawn to the great relief of the men, clearing the sky and bringing a cold wind and pale sun that totally failed to dry up any of the standing water. For the thousandth time, Fronto wished he was in Puteoli with a bunch of grapes and the timetable for the races. It seemed so far away in both distance and probability.

  “Haven’t you got to be annoying somewhere else, Gnaeus?”

  “I am free of duties for a grand to
tal of twenty minutes in order to halt my steady descent into starvation.”

  The prefect produced a cloth-wrapped bundle and opened it to reveal two small loaves of freshly-baked bread, half a cheese, and a small bowl of meat chunks the origin of which Fronto was not about to question. It was common knowledge that cheese was in ridiculously short supply and that meat had run out before they had even arrived.

  “I hope you shaved the rat first.”

  Ignoring the meat, he gratefully tore off a piece of bread and a chunk of cheese, only realising as he bit down on them how hungry he was and how much his stomach was growling.

  “All quiet?” Priscus enquired lightly

  “Sort of…”

  The Morini had given them a period of grace after the column had reached the fort, pulling back out of range of the walls to change tactic. The new arrivals had had little time to rest, though. After an hour’s meeting with Rufus, Brutus and Priscus, Fronto had managed maybe forty-five minutes of shut-eye before the alarm sounded and the army rushed to the defences to prepare for the next onslaught. Rufus had explained unhappily that this routine had been going on now for days, the locals never giving them more than four or five hours of rest.

  “They’re not going to rest until they have the fort.”

  Fronto shook his head. “They know there are still several Roman legions out there, as well as the cavalry. It’s a matter of time. They need to wipe out this garrison and then disappear into the woods before another army appears. I can see what they’re planning; I just can’t see why they’ve gone this far. I just can’t figure what triggered it?”

  Priscus swallowed his mouthful and cleared his throat. “I talked to Rufus about it. I gather the Morini were never truly under Caesar’s thumb by the end of last year. To expect them to sit by and let us use their main settlements as a campaign base was maybe a little short-sighted.” He leaned closer. “Personally, I think they were expecting you to come back from campaign rich and loaded down with slaves. I think it was an ill-conceived and opportunistic attempt to essentially rob the victors of their spoils. It’s all gone wrong for them though, as only two ships made it back to harbour. I expect they’ve looted your ships and are still hungry for more.”

  “I can only assume that Sabinus is doing his job well, though” Fronto countered. “I don’t know how many there are in the town, but I wouldn’t estimate more than six thousand. Rufus reckoned there were probably three times that number when the Ninth were first attacked. If it weren’t for Sabinus and Cotta out there standing on various necks, the number besieging us here would be growing, not shrinking.”

  “There are more. They’re just hidden in the woods in a cordon, keeping us trapped here. We tried sallying out to get provisions after the first assault and it was a bloody massacre. Lost three centuries of the Ninth and they never even reached the tree line. Don’t underestimate them, Marcus. They reduced the Ninth by about a third of their manpower and sealed them up in this fort in a matter of hours.”

  Fronto turned to his friend. “They’re not going to keep me pinned here until Hades reaches out for me. I’ve a long-standing arrangement with the bookmakers at Rome and Puteoli; I’ve half a cellar of good quality wine; and I’ve a very attractive, if controlling, young lady waiting for me to make her officially betrothed.”

  “Then you’d best tell them that” Priscus said quietly, casting aside his bread uneaten and pointing over the palisade. Fronto didn’t need to look. He could hear the roar.

  “Geminius? Time to use those new pila.”

  The centurion nodded and turned to the men lined up along the wooden wall, tapping his vine stick on his greaves impatiently.

  “Pilum at the ready. Mark your man and check the soldier on each side to make sure you’ve not doubled up.”

  Priscus and Fronto drew their blades and strode over to the wall. “You staying for the show?” Fronto asked, reaching down and collecting the shield leaning against it, settling it into place.

  “Why not? I was getting sick of riding my desk into battle. Got a spare shield?”

  Fronto nodded to a stack of five slightly damaged spares and, as Priscus collected one and gripped it ready, he crossed to the wall and looked over. The slope from this corner of the fort – the northeast – descended quite gently through a large apple orchard. Beyond the ditches, the ramparts of the town sloped away to the north on his left, the settlement itself only visible beyond as a jumble of roofs interspersed with trees. The view here was excellent; despite the apple trees that obscured the slope, the fields beyond opened up and were clear and visible for at least two miles, where they met the edge of the forest.

  What was of more urgent interest, however, were the scattered forms of the Morini rebels scrabbling up the slope beneath the trees.

  “They look a touch desperate?” Priscus noted.

  “I thought that” Fronto replied with a frown. “They’re coming up dangerously fast and not at all carefully.”

  “Release” bellowed Geminius. The legionaries along the wall, each having selected an approaching Gaul, cast their pilum with an expert arm, the twenty four missiles arcing out over the palisade and descending into the trees. Fronto watched with a sense of pride in his legion as the javelins punched into torsos, heads and limbs, tearing through them and inflicting horrible injuries, often killing outright. In several cases the plummeting, screaming bodies of the warriors knocked their fellows from their feet and brought them down in a jumble, coming to rest against tree trunks. Others were pinned to trees or the ground, transfixed in agony. One particularly brave warrior, affixed to a tree with a pilum through his middle, was hauling himself painfully forward off the weapon, leaving a trail of gore along its length.

  “Get ready!” the centurion shouted. The legionaries who had cast the pila were already drawing their swords and stepping forward to protect the wall. Moments later, the first of the Morini reached the outer ditch, which had been rendered somewhat ineffective now by the large quantities of brush and rubbish that had been tipped into it over the past few days to grant access to the walls. Leaping forward, the warriors pushed across the unstable and difficult infill. The second, inner, ditch was now of little more use then the first. Originally filled with pointed stakes to maim those crossing it, the lowest portion was now blocked with scattered bodies that obscured the stakes and lowered the gradient enough that the warriors hardly slowed to pass it.

  And suddenly battle was joined. The majority of the pila, arrows and other missiles had been used up over the first day of attacks and the scorpions had fallen silent since then. The workshops had slowed their production – their manpower being reassigned to help hold the walls – and were largely given over now to the repair of mail, helmets and shields, rather than the production of helpful missiles.

  Fronto was surprised not only at the desperate speed and ferocity of the attack, but also at their numbers. Over the past half day, each push had been several hours apart, carefully planned and often executed at a new position on the walls; usually two or three places at once. Moreover, the attacking forces had clearly been rotated each time, allowing many of the tribe to rest while the freshest warriors took their turn reducing the defending garrison. This attack was different: the mass of men storming up from the orchard, combined with the shouts of alarm from all around the fort, suggested that the Morini were committing every last man to this assault.

  Two warriors, each with arm rings of bronze and mail shirts denoting their high status, rushed at Fronto’s position, charging up the slope of the inner ditch and continuing at speed to the bank of the rampart and the palisade. One had a long spear with a wicked blade, which he thrust up at Fronto from the flat between the rampart and the ditch, forcing the legate to raise his shield and knock the point aside; the spear clearly had enough reach to cause him trouble above the wooden palisade. The second warrior had thrown himself at the timber and managed to hook an arm over the top, his other hand bringing the long sword slowly up to
a position where he could strike. Fronto, continually batting away the jabbing, probing spear, looked across quickly at Priscus, but the camp prefect was fighting his own spear-battle.

  Just as the legate was trying to decide how best to deal with the two men, a third tribesman – a young man with no armour and a muddy face – leapt up from the ditch and threw a rope with a looped end with heart-stopping accuracy. The loop fell around the point of one of the wall timbers and slid downwards, tightening as it went.

  He hardly had time to register the move, though, as the spear was there again, lunging for his face. Glancing across, he could see the second noble warrior almost pulled up to his chest, ready to throw himself over the defences and come at them from inside. One of Rufus’ reserve legionaries appeared as if from nowhere and ran at the man, smashing his shield boss into the climbing Morini noble and sending him back over the parapet with a shout of pain and alarm.

  “Good man!” Fronto barked as he finally noticed an opening in the spear-man’s attack. The warrior continually jabbed in a three-move sequence, after which he drew back for a second, gaining position to begin once more. Smashing the heavy shield around and panting with the exertion, Fronto knocked the point aside; and again, and again. As the man took a single step back, the spear waggling in an ungainly manner, Fronto swung sword and shield towards one another, the shield sideways and rim-out. The two edges connected on the spear about two feet below the head and smashed through the ash shaft, neatly trimming off the dangerous part.

  There was a sudden crack and a creak as one of the wall timbers began to move outwards and separate from the rest. Alarmed, Fronto ducked forward to see four burly men hauling on the rope, pulling in an attempt to destroy a section of the wall. Almost contemptuously, Fronto leaned over and cut the rope with his gladius, trying not to grin as the four men fell back into the ditch, holding the severed rope.