Marius' Mules Anthology Volume 1

by S. J. A. Turney

  Carbo and a centurion he knew by sight, a big man with a flattened nose, stood to attention with their men lined up behind them parade-style.

  Fronto nodded in satisfaction and cast his eyes back up toward the centre of the enormous camp, where he could see other legionaries jogging in formation toward them. No one in the ranks spoke as they awaited the arrival of the Fourteenth, who reached the parade ground area and fell into place next to the others. Fronto glanced at them out of the corner of his eye and could see the centurion smiling in realisation.

  ‘Good morning, men.’

  A roar answered him from the three centuries.

  ‘I’ve a little job for you all. We’re going to take a wander in woods, with the help of the scouts who went out this morning, and we’re going to lay first eyes, then hands, on the enemy supply wagons. By lunchtime I want those wagons back here and being distributed into the army’s stores. Think you can do that?’

  Another roar.

  ‘Good. Stand at ease for a few moments until the scouts arrive. Get to know one another, since you’ll be working quite closely over the next few hours.’

  He grinned.

  ‘Officers to me, please.’

  Carbo and the broken-nosed centurion strode out front, closely followed by the officer of the Fourteenth, who was shaking his head, smiling.

  ‘You two? I’d like you to meet Cantorix of the Fourteenth. I have it on good authority his century are good men, and I thought the presence of a staunchly Gallic unit might be advantageous this morning.’

  Cantorix grinned.

  ‘You could have told me you were an officer, sir. I’d have given you due deference.’

  Carbo glanced across at him.

  ‘A less officer-like officer you never will meet, Cantorix. If he turns up among your lot again, would you be kind enough to send him somewhere safe at the back?’

  Cantorix laughed out loud.

  ‘I suspect it’s not that easy!’

  ‘True.’ The primus pilus turned back to his commander. ‘I suppose there’s no point in trying to persuade you that we can do this without you and that a senior officer shouldn’t be putting himself in such a frankly stupid position?’

  Fronto shook his head.

  ‘My plan… my unit. Besides, there’s something else I might want to do, and that would require someone with staff authority.’

  Cantorix shuffled and shrugged his shoulders so that his mail shirt slipped into a more comfortable position.

  ‘Legate Plancus is going to throw a major fit when he hears we’ve been seconded without his say so, sir.’

  Fronto brushed that aside.

  ‘Caesar agreed, so Plancus can go piss up a pilum or argue it with the general.’

  The braided Gaulish centurion smiled.

  ‘Fair enough, sir. How are you planning to do this?’

  ‘First step is to head to the previous site of their wagons, then to move on to the current location. We’ll split the scouts into three groups, one with each century. Cantorix? You and yours will take the main forest path that the wagons took at a nice slow stroll. Feel free to let your entire century talk in their native tongue. I know the officers usually discourage such a thing, but I’m hoping to try and talk these tribes down from their pedestal and convince them that without supplies to keep them going, they’re better off joining us, and you could go a long way to helping with that.’

  He smiled.

  ‘That, of course, means that I’ll be going with you. The other two centuries will make their way as fast as they can by circuitous routes, guided by the scouts, until they can come at the clearing from other directions. That way, if we have to do this the hard way, we’ll have a solid advantage. Hopefully, you’ll get there moving fast before we do at our leisurely pace and be in position before we arrive. When you get there, spread out ready for trouble, but stay back and hidden.’

  The other two centurions nodded.

  ‘And then, sir?’

  ‘Then we become heavily reliant on the scouts. I would like to try and repeat the procedure on the current position of the wagons, but that might be more troublesome, depending on what trails the scouts can find and where they lead. Be aware at all times of your bearings, as one century getting horribly lost in those woods with an antagonistic bunch of the enemy wandering around could be a somewhat fatal experience.’

  He took a deep breath.

  ‘If all goes well and the three centuries converge on the wagons, we’ll overcome whatever resistance there is and then two centuries can form a line and hold them off if necessary while the third leads the wagons back out of the forest. All clear?’

  The three men nodded.

  ‘Good, then you’d best fall back in. The scouts are coming.’

  * * * * *

  Fronto and Cantorix jogged forward along the trail as quietly as they possibly could; surprisingly so, really, given the mail shirt and phalera harness the centurion was wearing. The scout waved them to the side of the track and the two officers moved quickly off the road and onto the grass verge, beneath the branches, as they approached the point where the Gaulish scout was peering around a bend in the track.

  Fronto appeared behind the man and leaned out to look. The clearing was large, perhaps a hundred and fifty or even two hundred feet in diameter, and packed with everything the tribe on the run might need. The wagons, which numbered in the dozens, were arrayed in half of the clearing, carefully manoeuvred and parked between the remaining stumps where the tribe had cut the trees down to widen the clearing and also to form the fence that sealed off the remaining half of the clearing and which held cattle, goats and pigs in tight confines.

  Fronto ducked back, irritation plastered across his face. Cantorix shrugged and then peered out himself. Nodding, he pulled his head back in to the side. There were a few ordinary folk of the tribes, going about feeding the animals and gathering items from the wagons.

  That wasn’t what was annoying the legate, though.

  The wagons had been carefully arranged to fit between the stumps and it must have taken hours to get them in that position. Freeing them and taking them back along the trail to the Roman camp would be near impossible in anything less than half a day.

  For some reason, Fronto had expected them to be on the run, prepared to flee at all times, the beasts still hooked up to the vehicles and in a position for a quick escape. He had not planned on them having set up a semipermanent store.

  He slumped and shrugged.

  Cantorix frowned and made strange arcane dances with his fingers, miming something incomprehensible. Fronto stared at him and shrugged again. The centurion sighed and repeated the gestures, slowly and elaborately, waggling his eyebrows meaningfully. Fronto sighed.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re saying’ he whispered through gritted teeth.

  ‘Kill the cattle, burn the wagons’ the man hissed back at him quietly.

  Fronto frowned. It was a thought that had occurred to him before now. Shame to waste it all, but the primary goal of the whole escapade was to cut off the supplies of the rebels. The smoke from the wagons would alert the whole lot, of course. And then, with it having been dry for days there was always the possibility of the woods catching fire. Could it be worth it?

  He shook his head. No. His reason for this was more than merely depriving them of goods. It was goading them into accepting terms and surrendering.

  He shook his head again, this time directly at Cantorix.

  ‘No. We go ahead and take them all. If it takes all day, we’ll still do it. Let’s just hope the others got here too.’

  The Gaulish centurion gave him a helpless look, but nodded, and Fronto nudged the scout and pointed back along the track. The three men wandered back to the seventy men standing in formation on the trail a couple of hundred paces away. Fronto looked them up and down.

  ‘Well, centurion, that’s an end to the sneaking. Can’t sneak a whole century up there, Besides, we need the others to he
ar that we’ve arrived.’

  Cantorix nodded and gestured to his optio.

  ‘Idocus? You get the animal job. When we get to the clearing, the left side is a huge animal pen, separated into three parts. Send three men to the pigs and three to the goats. Get them roped together and start leading them back to camp. Take another twenty men and start moving the oxen out two at a time onto the track. While you’re doing that, I’ll take another twenty, and we’ll start moving the carts out to hook them up to the animals. Soon as they’re done we can start moving them off, with one driver per cart.’

  He turned to Fronto.

  ‘That leaves only about twenty five men to defend us while we work. Will that be enough, sir?’

  Fronto shrugged. ‘It’ll have to be. Hopefully, the other centuries have made it round through the woods and are waiting for us. I’ll take the carts, you lead the defence. If the Tenth arrive to help, send more men back to help us with the carts and animals. Alright?’

  Cantorix nodded.

  ‘I’m sending Dannos and Villu to help you. Villu used to be a thief and cattle rustler, I believe, so he should be quite useful, but he also had his tongue cut out, so don’t expect much conversation.’

  Fronto rolled his eyes.

  ‘Let’s go and hope Fortuna’s watching over us.’

  Taking a deep breath, he raised his arm and let it fall, and the century of men began to tramp forward in perfect unison. Fronto smiled to himself. Despite recent outbursts he would rather forget, he was surprised to find, as he thought about it, how many Gauls in whose company he had spent the past year and upon whom he had come to rely. Perhaps what the army was doing wasn’t merely an impediment to getting home, but was purposeful and worthwhile on a higher level.

  The alarm went up in the clearing before the century even came within sight. There was a certain advantage to the alarm, in a way, since the noncombatant folk of the tribe would have time to stop milking goats and flee before they became involved in a brawl.

  The century of Gallic legionaries rounded the slight bend in the track and the forest opened up ahead. Somewhere in the distance, beneath the canopy of the woods, a deep horn blow sounded.

  The century marched out of the trail, four abreast, into the open and shouted commands went up. A column of men led by the optio picked up the pace to treble time and ran off to the left, toward the animal pens.

  Another call from the centurion led a second group to peel off to the right. Fronto veered away with them, watching the centurion run straight ahead with his men, doubling their speed as they made their way through the middle of the clearing toward the group of tribal warriors who had been on watch and who were now hurriedly arming themselves and taking up a defensive stance.

  The ground in the clearing was uneven and, though cleared of undergrowth, still plagued by hidden rocks and the gnarled, bulging roots of the cleared trees. The sounds of commotion in the near distance, muffled by the trees, spoke volumes about the sudden activity of the tribes. Their camp must be close, given the proximity of the noise, clearly caused by the tribes rallying their warriors to run and defend the supplies.

  Fronto and his men reached the nearest wagon and the legate scrambled up onto the tree stump next to it, just high enough to afford him a view over the carts. Behind him, men started hauling the cart back, grunting and groaning with the exertion as they pulled the vehicle back into the open toward the track. As it passed slowly by, Fronto lifted the rainproof cover and nodded in appreciation at the many sacks of wheat that were stored beneath; enough grain for an entire tribe for at least a week.

  He was busy mentally congratulating himself for the speed and efficiency with which they had shifted the first cart and was beginning to believe that he had overestimated the work and that the whole job would be over quicker than he had initially thought when his face fell. A quick glance across the clearing, taking in the number of carts and how some of them were wedged in narrow spaces swept that thought aside. Yes, they had moved the first vehicle easily, but then it was in the easiest position to begin with.

  As the cart cleared the tree stumps and more of the men ran in to approach the second cart, it became clear that already this one would be trouble, wedged sideways. He frowned and scanned the tops. They would have to move two other carts into the edge of the wood just to free up the space to move this one along. The whole thing was like some child’s wooden puzzle.

  A crash across the clearing, followed by the grating and jarring sounds of steel on steel announced that Cantorix and his men had engaged the guards. The amount of shouting in guttural tongues, however, clearly showed that reinforcements were on the way from the camp deeper in the woods. Briefly, Fronto wondered whether it might have been a better idea just to attack their camp, but he quickly brushed the idea aside as potentially suicidal. Three centuries could probably hold the clearing against the enemy and shift the goods, but that was fighting a purely defensive action with no expectation of victory. A full attack would be a whole different matter.

  He gradually became aware, as his men moved the next cart, that there were more metallic sounds, coming from a different direction. For a moment he held his breath, tensely, but the sound was a familiar one: that of a century of men in mail, their weapons and shields out and ready. He craned to see over the carts.

  One of the other centuries from the Tenth was pouring into the clearing from the eaves of the woods past the carts. Fronto grinned. He could not tell which century it was from here, but he could see the centurion’s crest at the front as it disappeared among the carts, leading the men into the fight.

  Good. He had been starting to worry whether the others would get here. If all had gone according to plan, they would have been here already, ready to come in as pincers and close the trap. Clearly that had not happened, since only one century had arrived at all and they were late.

  Still, better now than later when they were all dead.

  Gesturing to the men to keep working on the carts, Fronto clambered up from the stump and onto the nearest wagon. Standing high, he took in the scene. As ordered, men were roping the animals together ready to lead them back along the track, while a pair of oxen were being brought forward to lead the first cart away. The irritating and befuddling puzzle of which carts to move to free the others was gradually being unravelled by three particular legionaries from the Fourteenth, who were arguing and pointing, the one called Villu making strange angry noises with his tongueless mouth as he jabbed his finger at another legionary’s chest. In the distance, at the far end of the clearing, Cantorix was struggling with his two dozen men to hold the wide track that led back toward the enemy encampment. Already he was facing odds of three to one, though the century from the Tenth were closing for support.

  Fronto nodded in satisfaction and was about to drop back down from the wagon when he saw the enemy reserves beginning to arrive. Between the trees and along the track, Gauls were flooding toward the clearing. His plan for a quick attack, in and out with the wagons, was looking extremely foolish now. As he watched, the flood of reinforcements poured into the fight, meeting the fresh steel and muscle of the Tenth’s century as they came up from the wagons. The struggle was becoming bitter and hard-fought.

  There had to be something he could do to tip the situation? Something that would stop the madness or at least speed up their capturing of the goods. If the Gauls…

  His attention was drawn to the other side of the clearing as a pig screamed. Fronto frowned as he tried to see what had happened, but as he surveyed the animal pens, his vision refocused on the arrows falling among them. The Gauls were shooting into the clearing indiscriminately, careless of whether they killed animals or men!

  Fronto shook his head in disbelief. Were these people so blinded and stupid that they would kill the animals needlessly rather than let them fall into enemy hands? The policy of deprivation that had plagued the early days of the campaign?

  As he raged mentally over the stupidity of it all
, he realised that more arrows were issuing from beneath the boundary of the wood and the archers hidden therein. These, though, flashed orange and flickering through the air, soaked in pitch and burning bright. He stared in disbelief as the first successful shot hit a wagon of grain and flour nearby, sending flames racing out across the material and sacking.

  The danger had not occurred to him until he realised that the missile blow that punctured the sack had also sent a cloud of white dust into the air, which, catching the flame from the arrow, exploded with a powerful flash that seared his face and left him with purple and green blotches obscuring his vision.

  Fronto staggered back and collapsed onto the wagon as more fire arrows fell among the supplies.

  ‘The idiots!’ he bellowed to nobody in particular as he struggled upright, rubbing his eyes to try and clear the blotchy colours.

  ‘The stupid, mindless idiots. Destroy anything rather than let it become Roman. Idiocy!’

  He became aware that the men working on the carts had stopped to look up at him in surprise.

  ‘Leave that. Keep the carts safe and try to put the fires out. Piss on them if you have to.’

  Shaking his head and blinking, Fronto jumped to the next cart, a low grumble beginning in his throat. From wagon to wagon he hopped, the grumble growing into an angry growl and threatening to become a roar as he picked up pace, moving across the clearing toward the fight, ignoring the deadly flaming shafts that whipped past him.

  The fighting was becoming more deadly and vicious as the reinforcements from both sides turned it from a skirmish into more of a small battle. Screams and clanks filled the air as Fronto jumped from a cart to a wagon and, reaching the edge of the affray, threw his arms up.

  ‘Disengage!’ he bellowed.

  The command was such a surprise that it took a while for the legionaries to obey and pull back. The Gauls seemed as astonished as the Romans and hovered for a moment, uncertain as to what was expected of them. Even the arrow storm faltered and slowed to a stop.