Marius' Mules IV: Conspiracy of Eagles

by S. J. A. Turney

  The air was suddenly alive with arrows, whipping through the woodland, many thudding into trees or being pushed off course by fronds and leaves, but too many for comfort sheathing themselves in the men of the legions.

  A soldier was suddenly at Fronto’s left, sword in hand, teeth bared as the rain battered him. Fronto turned to give him an encouraging grin but was too late as an arrow took the man, dead centre in the neck, punching through his adam’s apple and hurling him backwards to fall gurgling among the undergrowth. A moment later another man joined the legate, and he spotted Cantorix just beyond the new arrival, ahead of his men and bellowing a battle cry in a Gallic tongue that Fronto was surprised he was starting to understand a little.

  The depths of the forest became slowly, imperceptibly lighter, though the running legionaries were too busy to notice. Fronto’s battle-honed wits began to tell him that something was wrong as the mist brightened and it took him only a moment to realise that the arrows had ceased. Not a single missile whipped through the shade.

  “Halt!” he bellowed urgently, too late for some.

  The front runners, those eager for the kill and for revenge on these damned Germanic warriors who had ambushed them and killed good friends, suddenly found they had run or leapt clear of the edge of the forest in their enthusiasm.

  A few yards behind, Fronto and Cantorix came to a halt, most of the legionaries joining them, watching with held breath as the scene unfolded.

  Almost a score of men had burst from the forest’s edge, yelling their blood lust to the sky, to the waiting ears of Mars, Minerva, Jupiter and Fortuna, and suddenly found themselves on springy turf, enveloped in a mist formed by wind-swirled rain. Slowing to a confused halt, they exchanged worried glances, the impetus of their attack suddenly swept away, swords ready for an enemy that wasn’t there.

  Somewhere behind them they became aware of their centurions and officers calling them back, but even as they recognised the orders, the mist parted like billowing curtains in front of them to reveal a wall of humanity, three men deep and stretching from side to side, the ends lost in the grey.

  And they all had bows, the strings drawn back to their ears the arrows nocked and ready.

  “Shit!” yelled Artorius, excused duty legionary of the third cohort, second century of the Fourteenth legion, and closed his eyes.

  Fronto watched with leaden expectation as the arrows of three dozen archers punched into the chests of the exposed legionaries, every man felled like a tree, falling to their knees and then faces, or thrown back onto the grass, staring up into the grey, searching for the Gods that had deserted them.

  The men of the legions remaining in the forest instinctively began to move back between the trees, further away from the threat.

  “How far do you reckon that open ground is?” Fronto called across to Cantorix.

  “About thirty yards, I reckon, sir.”

  “So it’d take an exceptional archer to get off more than one shot while we crossed it?”

  Cantorix grinned. “Exceptional, sir. And they’ll be using sinew bowstrings. The rain’ll be playing havoc with ‘em, sir. Half of ‘em will be useless already and the rest’ll only manage a couple more arrows before they’re ruined.”

  “On me!” Fronto bellowed, stepping deeper into the forest and hoping that the cover of the woodland would protect them; also that the enemy’s grasp of Latin was small or non-existent. He watched the two hundred or so men of his force converging on his position and held his breath, hoping that the enemy were nocked and waiting for another charge. If they started firing randomly into the woods again they would likely reduce the force considerably and very quickly. Fortunately no arrows came as Fronto looked around at his men.

  “We can’t spread out to take them. The river hems us in to the right and who knows what’s left, but we do know there’s a force of warriors from the ambush out there somewhere and we don’t want to blunder into them. So we’re stuck. We have to take them head on and they’re prepared. So here’s what we’re going to do: we’re going in as a wedge.”

  Menenius, standing next to Fronto, turned his head and flashed an incredulous look at him.

  “We go in as fast as we’ve ever run in our lives” Fronto went on. “Every archer out there will get one shot. After that, they’re screwed, because we’ll be amongst them, and we all know that a gladius beats a bow in close combat. Once we’ve punched into the line, we peel off. Cantorix and Atenos and their centuries will head right towards the river and carve up every archer they find. The rest of you, with me, will turn left and make sure we get every last mother’s son among them. Only when every archer is eating turf do we stop and re-form. Got it?”

  The tribune reached out gingerly and tapped Fronto on the shoulder, drawing close.

  “Are you mad, sir?”

  “Quite possibly. It has been suggested before. But if you can think of a better way, enlighten me.”

  “We go back to the boats, cross to the west bank and come back in force, armed properly.”

  Fronto shook his head wearily. “The chances of us getting back without another ambush are tiny. They know we’re here now, and we’re at our objective. We set up a bridgehead and hold it for a few hours – a day at most – and the bridge will come to us.”

  “Fronto? That’s madness!”

  “So...” the legate turned back to the men, “quite a few of us will die in the next few minutes, but… well, that’s what we signed on for, wasn’t it? Those of you who will be in the rear centre of the wedge, I want you to remove your mail shirt and pass it to a friend. In two minutes I want half of you unarmoured in the centre and the rest of you wearing two mail shirts – preferably the really muscly buggers, as you’ll have to run fast wearing two lots of armour. It’ll be like wearing a cart.”

  He grinned. “You,” he pointed at a man “give me your shirt.”

  “What?” barked Cantorix. “Can’t do that, sir.”

  “You damn well can. It’s an order. I’m the front of the wedge.”

  Atenos was suddenly next to his fellow centurion. “He’s right, sir. The head of the wedge is a prestigious position, sir. A guaranteed commendation and worth a phalera and a fortnight’s leave at least. We can’t let you deprive a man of that, sir!”

  Cantorix grinned. “A centurion doesn’t get enough leave, does he? Shall we toss a coin?”

  Fronto shook his head and tried to reach past them for the mail shirt now being proffered by the legionary. The two centurions leaned towards each other, blocking him off.

  “My duty, I think” Cantorix grinned. “The Tenth have reputation to spare, but the Fourteenth never seem to get the glory.” Atenos looked hard at him for a moment and then nodded.

  As the centurion from the Fourteenth grabbed the shirt and pulled it over his large, muscular frame, covering his own mail that glistened red with the blood from his earlier wound, Fronto looked helplessly at Atenos.

  “This was my plan. I’m not going to let anyone else grab the shitty end of the stick.”

  “Tough, sir.” Atenos smiled. “Get that shirt off, sir, and get in the centre. If this works, you’ll need to be around to organise the defence until the bridge is finished.”

  Fronto opened his mouth to argue, but the look on the centurion’s face was adamant and he simply nodded and began to peel off the heavy, wet armour. Next to him, Menenius had already divested and passed his mail shirt to an enormous Gaul, who was having trouble struggling into it.

  A minute passed in tense expectation as the last of the armour was transferred and men fell into their assigned places, allowing for the fact that they would not be able to consolidate into the wedge properly until they left the woodland. Finally, the archers in the clearing seemed to have come to the end of their patience and occasional arrows whizzed into the woods, burying themselves in timber here and there. Fronto smiled grimly to himself. Every shot they took lessened the chances of that man being able to shoot during the charge.

>   “Are we all ready?” Cantorix waved and gestured for everyone to settle into their final positions. “As soon as you pass the last tree, get as tight into formation as you’ve ever been. I want you all to be able to feel the breath of the man behind on your neck. Tight and fast, then break as soon as we’re there.”

  The men murmured their agreement. Fronto looked around from his position in the midst of the unarmoured centre, grumbling at his secure and unadventurous place. He couldn’t see Atenos or Menenius in the press, nor Cantorix, though he could hear the centurion at the head of the wedge.

  “Go!”

  And suddenly he was running, along with everyone else, his concentration now fully on the men around him and the forest floor, watching for treacherous branches or bumps that could foul him and ruin the formation, aware of the weakness of his knee with every painful click.

  A sudden image flashed into his mind of a legionary being beaten within an inch of death on the orders of centurion Fabius for tripping in manoeuvres and fouling his unit. He’d been so outraged by the man and now, as he ran, barely missing a tangled root with his left foot, he felt that perhaps…

  Angry, he pushed the thoughts away and concentrated on the run.

  Arrows were now coming thicker and faster. The sounds of them thudding into trees were fewer and farther between, while the sounds of them crunching into mail or the screams as they punched into flesh were all more common. Here and there an archer was casting aside his bow, the string now ruined, and drawing a sword.

  The stygian gloom of the woodland gave way to the pale, misty grey of the clearing and the men closed formation as only legionaries could, Fronto finding himself so tightly packed in the press that he could hardly move.

  A tense heartbeat, and there finally came the expected sound: the collective twang and rush, whirr and zip of countless arrows being released simultaneously. Another single heartbeat and the result manifested in the screams of dozens of men and the inevitable slowing of the wedge. Three more heartbeats and the front of the Roman unit seemed to meet the archers, the sounds ringing out eerily through the swirling mist.

  Fronto lurched, tripping on a body that had fallen in front of him and his eyes momentarily ran across it, almost certain it would be Cantorix, only to see a legionary he knew not, three arrows jutting from his face, chest and belly. He must have been one of the front men, though, to take three shots. Fronto found that he was praying subconsciously to Mars that Cantorix made it, despite the fact that such a notion was ridiculous.

  Two more heartbeats and the press opened up in front of him, men veering off as assigned, moving left and right along the line of archers. Somehow, strangely, Fronto found himself staggering to a halt with no enemy to fight.

  Turning this way and that, he peered into the barely-penetrable gloom, the rain hammering at him and plastering the tunic to his torso. It seemed that the archers had broken and routed as soon as they realised they couldn’t stop the Roman force. In the subdued fog of rain, he could hear the sounds of fighting off to the left and right, but here there was no one, apart from a few legionaries looking as lost as he; a few wounded, staggering with an arrow in the thigh or clutching one jutting from an arm.

  Turning, he looked back toward the barely visible treeline. Bodies littered the ground between here and there, the grisly graveyard disappearing into the mist. A lot of men had died there, but it appeared that they had completed the mission. The bridge site was safe for now.

  Rubbing the excess water from his hair, Fronto looked around for a centurion, optio or tribune, but saw none. He would have to pull them together and get down to the river. This was unlikely to be the last they would see of the barbarians before the engineers reached this bank.

  “On me!” he yelled. “Re-form!”

  Time to establish a bridgehead, somehow.

  Chapter 11

  (East bank of the Rhine)

  Fronto walked across the grass toward the approaching men, legionaries looming out of the mist like some sort of demon horde, grinning maniacally at having survived such an insane charge. Many of them, he noted, carried some trophy of their kills, the Gallic legionaries of the Fourteenth tending toward the more grisly. It was not something that Fronto particularly approved of in the aftermath of battle but it was hardly unknown, particularly among the Celtic peoples, and he could hardly chide them for such a petty thing after their brave sacrifices.

  “Any officers among you?”

  Two figures stepped out ahead of the men returning from the east, a centurion and, Fronto was pleased to note, the optio who had saved his life at the farmstead. Behind them, a cornicen and a signifer came striding forth, the standard bearer dragging a wounded leg.

  “Over here” called a voice from behind, and Fronto turned gratefully, to see the figure of Atenos appearing from the mist in the direction of the river.

  “Anyone seen Cantorix or Menenius?”

  No one spoke, and Fronto felt the leaden certainty in his gut that the centurion had not made it. The front man of a wedge never did. Rarely did the front third, in fact. Menenius, on the other hand, was in the press of safer men at the back. They would turn up soon enough, whatever had happened to them.

  “Right. I want pickets stationed all around the edge of the forest. The men with the best eyesight and hearing, and those who can whistle loud enough to be heard half a mile away. Atenos? I want you and this musician and standard bearer down by the water. Get the duty centurion’s attention on the far bank. When you can get him onto the bridge to speak, let me know and I’ll come talk to him.”

  Atenos nodded and, the two signallers falling in at his shoulders, jogged off to the river.

  “You” Fronto pointed to the centurion he didn’t know. “Set up the pickets.” The man saluted and began scouring the surviving legionaries for the best men, hooking them out with a beckoning finger.

  “And you” he gestured to the optio. “I want a work party to gather every last Roman body they can find, as well as the casualties, and bring them down to the river bank, and then I want a full headcount of who we have left. How many men, officers, signallers and so on.”

  The optio saluted and Fronto gave him a weary smile. “What’s your name, soldier?”

  “Vitiris, sir. Chosen man of the…”

  “Centurion, I think” Fronto interrupted. “Just make sure you live long enough to requisition the crest from the quartermaster.”

  As the men moved off, assigned to either work parties or picket duty appropriately, Fronto limped wearily down toward the river bank, making for the call of the Roman cornu he could hear. Now that the rush of battle-induced adrenaline had worn off, the ache in his knee was becoming unbearable. Pausing and reaching down, he ran his hands over the joint and was momentarily taken aback by just how swollen it was compared with the right knee.

  Grumbling and muttering about the effects of age, he limped across the grass, wincing occasionally.

  Here, the river bank rose above the flow with a drop of some four or five feet into the roiling, seething waters; a good height for the bridge to make landfall. As he approached the bank, he could see the figures of Atenos and the signallers on the turf.

  Once more brushing the excess water from his hair and shaking his head to clear as much as possible, Fronto limped over to them.

  “Any luck?”

  The big Gaul turned and smiled, pointing across the water. Fronto followed his gesturing finger and squinted into the sheeting rain, picking out the image of human shapes approaching on the bridge. The small party of half a dozen men reached the truncated bridge end and gathered there. Fronto half expected to see Caesar, but the general hadn’t come yet. These were the officers currently on duty at the bridge site. The legate stepped as close as he dared to the drop into the water and cleared his throat.

  “Centurion? Can you hear me?”

  The distance-and-rain-muffled voice of the officer called back “Just about. That legate Fronto?”

 
“Yes.”

  “Thank Juno. We were starting to worry.”

  Fronto, his voice hoarse from shouting into the rain, took a deep breath. “We’ve destroyed the archers and routed another force, but we’re still in danger and poorly equipped. Can you send over some equipment for us?”

  “Of course, sir. We’ll fire a rope over by arrow and set up a ferry from the bridge. What do you need?”

  “Everything. Have someone fetch our helmets, shields, pila and everything else. It’s all stockpiled ready. We could also do with a few archers if they feel up to hand-over-hand-ing it across a rope?”

  The centurion let out a laugh. “I’ll see what I can do sir. You sit tight while we get the ball rolling.”

  Fronto turned and breathed deeply.

  “Soon as it all arrives, can you get it distributed appropriately?”

  Atenos nodded. “Of course, sir.”

  “I’ll be sat on a rock somewhere hoping the bottom half of my leg’s not about to fall off.”

  Atenos grinned. “If he’s still alive, there was a capsarius in my century. I’ll look into it and if he’s here, I’ll send him to find you.”

  Fronto nodded and wobbled off across the grass in search of somewhere solid to sit down that wouldn’t churn with mud. Men were beginning to make their way into the clearing, carrying the bodies of the fallen and supporting those too wounded to walk on their own. It was somewhat disheartening to ponder on the numbers, but then the assault had apparently been anticipated, which had rendered their mission considerably more dangerous and costly than expected. Exactly how the enemy had known they were coming was still a mystery, but the more he thought on the ambush at the farmstead, the more he was convinced that someone had tipped them off. Presumably the Ubii.

  Fronto’s eyes widened as a familiar shape loomed out of the seething white rain-mist.

  Cantorix could hardly stand, and was being gently carried along by two legionaries. Fronto noted without surprise the stumps of arrow shafts jutting from his right shoulder, left hip, right arm, and both legs, apparently all broken off when he fell to the ground, driving them deeper in. He was deathly pale but grinning through a mouthful of blood.