Conspiracy of Eagles mm-4

by S. J. A. Turney

  “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 servi
ce — 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 Neptune 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!”

  He wondered for a moment how the oarsman knew, but then realised they were looking over at one of the other rowers. Torn between the need to try and help and the knowledge that there was little he could do anyway, Fronto watched as the hapless, screaming sailor rose over the crest of a wave and disappeared from both sight and hearing.

  Turning, he shuffled across to Brutus and the steering oar once more, grasping the end as he had a few minutes earlier.

  “Even the damn Gods have turned their back on this campaign, Decimus.”

  “Didn’t think you were that pious, Fronto.”

  “I try not to actively defy them.”

  “Well rub that bow-legged Goddess of yours, Fronto. Look.”

  The legate peered off in the direction of Brutus’ pointing finger. It took him a moment to spot two flickering fires.

  “That’ll be the beacons they were going to set up at Gesoriacum. They must have lit them to guide ships in through the storm. We’re nearly there; closer than I thought. A mile at most.”

  Fronto gripped the beam tight, his eyes locked on the twin fires that twinkled in the darkness, intermittently vanishing as the waves reared or a particular gusting cloud obscured them. Suddenly another white flash lit the scene and Fronto finally felt relief wash over him at the regular shapes of a harbour and buildings, with the unmistakable outline of a Roman fortification on the hill behind.

  Gesoriacum.

  They’d made it.

  The ‘Demeter’ bounced against the jetty of the Gesoriacum harbour and Fronto silently thanked every God and Goddess that rose to the surface of his mind. He’d almost swallowed his tongue in fright as Brutus steered them through the surprisingly narrow entrance to the river-mouth harbour, but the young man had proved more than equal to the task.

  An even more welcome sight as they’d entered was that of another of the fleet’s triremes already in the harbour and scooting lazily towards the dock on their few remaining oars.

  There was no sign of life down by the docks, though Fronto could hardly blame anyone for that, given the weather. He glanced across from the rail at the sister ship that was just docking at the far side of the jetty. The ‘Fides’ looked in worse shape than their own ship, but its crew and complement of troops were moving toward the rail gratefully.

  Brutus had left the steering now to one of the sailors and strode across to where Fronto stood.

  “Best get everyone disembarked and get up to the headquarters to report in.”

  Fronto gestured to the beacons blazing on the towers and the new ramparts around the port’s periphery, barely visible in the dark and the rain, except when lit starkly by the lightning.

  “Rufus has been busy in our absence. Look at those works. Think he was bored or expecting trouble?”

  “Let’s go find out.”

  Fronto nodded and called to the centurions of the two centuries on board.

  “Get your men formed up on the jetty. Arms and armour only. We’ll come back and unload everything else in the morning when it’s light and hopefully drier.”

  The centurions saluted and Fronto looked across to where the men were now disembarking from the Fides opposite. Two more centurions were bellowing at their men who were filing off and into tent-groups.

  “Come on.”

  As soon as the sailors had run out a plank, Fronto hurried down to the jetty with a profound sense of relief, Brutus hot on his heels. A few steps on the stable jetty were almost enough to allow him to adjust, though he still felt as though he was swaying gently. The two centurions on the wooden jetty were unknown to him, and apparently men of the Seventh, though they saluted him and his fellow legate readily as they approached.

  “Have your men in two single lines on the jetty. I’ll form the other two up the same.That way all four centuries can march together back up to the fort.”

  “Yes sir. What of the cargo, sir?”

  “Leave it till morning.”

  “But sir, we’ve got four of the cavalry horses — one of them may have to be put out of its misery, mind — and if we leave any of the loot here, it might be pillaged by the locals.”

  Fronto shook his head. “Have the ship’s officer and men lead the horses ashore when we’ve left and take them to the nearest stable. No one’s going to steal your treasure, though, centurion. Look at those ramparts. The port’s under Roman control.”

  The centurion managed to remain apparently unconvinced, but saluted and went about his business.

  Having made the arrangements, Fronto stepped forward a few yards, giving the four officers the space to muster their men. Brutus followed him and stood tapping his lip thoughtfully.

  “Have you noticed the lack of people?”

  “It’s pissing down, Brutus.”

  “Yes, but even on the walls.”

  “Come on. Rufus only has one legion and he’s got the port, the town, the fort and who knows what else to deal with. There’ll only be a few of them down here and they’ll be keeping out of the rain. After all, who else would have lit the beacons?”

  Brutus nodded uncertainly and glanced up at the town, with smoke rising from numerous roofs. The thought of getting somewhere he could huddle by a fire in the dry was overwhelmingly attractive.

  It took less than a minute to get the four c
enturies lined up, the men moving as fast and efficiently as possible, each one feeling the urge to reach somewhere dry, warm and stable. As soon as the four centurions confirmed that their units were ready, Fronto issued the command and the small force marched out proudly into the heart of Gesoriacum.

  Across the cobbled quay they strode, towards the main thoroughfare that ran up the hill to the looming shape of the fort, almost obscured behind the clouds of smoke rising from the cosy fires of the Morini townsfolk.

  A constant river of brown liquid ran from the slope of the street, across the quay and down into the harbour. The men eyed it with distaste and a certain amount of unhappiness as they moved into it, preparing to slog up the street towards their objective.

  At commands from the centurions, the four lines of men doubled out, splitting into eight columns of forty — give or take the few fallen in Britannia — and they began the trudge up the slope with the two legates out front.

  Brutus turned to Fronto with a nervous frown.

  “Can you feel it?”

  “What?”

  “Something’s wrong. The hair on the back of my neck’s standing up.”

  Fronto glanced around and then ahead again and felt a chill run down his spine, terminating in his coccyx and causing him to shudder.

  “No one. Not a sentry, not a guard, not a local. There’s no one.”

  “Not quite” Brutus shook his head and pointed at a house as they passed. Fronto followed his gesture and saw the shutter on a window close hurriedly, leaving only the faint glow of firelight around the edge, but not before he saw the face of a young girl glaring at him.

  “I think you’re right. Trouble.”

  “What do we do?”

  “Nothing yet. Any move we make to ready the men is going to be seen by dozens of people and we don’t know what’s happening yet. We might make it up to the fort without trouble. Let’s not rock the boat, so to speak.”

  Brutus nodded. “All the same…”

  Turning to the centurion behind him as he walked, he hissed as quietly as he could “Be ready. Have your men on the alert as quietly as you can. No weapons drawn as yet.”