“They’re probably trying to buy time” Fronto said, trying to keep the anger and resentment from his tone.
“Possibly” the general acknowledged. “Without a sizeable cavalry force we are effectively blind and relying on the few patrols commander Galronus can manage, and otherwise on the word of potentially treacherous natives and simple hearsay. The entire island of Britannia could be forming into an army over the next hill with a thousand druids for all we know. Thus I want the alert high and maintained.”
Cicero swallowed and took a deep breath. “Forgive me for reiterating, Caesar, but I can still only advise that we return to Gaul. You said it yourself: we’re effectively blind. We have no idea what’s coming. And while we sit here and wish the cavalry would arrive, the weather is turning inclement. I can appreciate that a chastisement of the tribes that supported the Veneti against us would be a good way to instil a respect for Rome, but we can hardly punish the wayward tribes of Britannia in these conditions. Returning is the only sensible course of action.”
The general’s gaze rose slowly to Cicero and came to rest there, carrying the full force of Caesar’s scorn.
“For the very last time, Cicero, there will be no return to Gaul until I am satisfied that we have achieved what we came to do. If you so much as mention this again, I will consider confining you to the ships with the Briton hostages. Am I understood?”
Fronto glanced across at his fellow legate to see Cicero’s speculative look being flashed back at him again. Damn it! He’s still sounding me out against the general and… Fronto ground his teeth, horribly aware that he was starting to find Cicero’s stand somewhat seductive.
“Very well” the general said quietly. “The two legions will set about fortifying the camp. We have rations with us for today and tomorrow only. So tomorrow we will have to examine the situation and look at foraging for more supplies. For now, though, we concentrate on consolidation and defence.”
Caesar’s eyes passed around the tent and fell upon Galronus.
“All with the exception of your good self, commander.”
The Remi officer remained silent as the general leaned over the table before him, unrolling the map that had been amended by Volusenus. Further detail had recently been added, charcoal marks and text scribbled across it. Pinning the rolled edges down with wax tablets, Caesar pointed to a place deep in the heart of the island, almost at the far edge of the map from the marked landing site.
The officers all took a few steps forward to peer at the map.
“This chart has been given some extra detail by our hostages. We appear to be largely surrounded by tribes that I consider untrustworthy and that historically have links with the Veneti and other Gallic troublemakers. There are one or two tribes in the island that have long been supporters of Rome, at least since the subjugation of the Belgae.”
Fronto noticed Galronus’ hands clench irritably at that last phrase and felt sympathy for his friend. Now was not the time for confrontation, however, and Galronus clearly recognised it.
“With respect, Caesar, I have become very familiar with your language, but I am still a relative novice with your written words.”
Caesar nodded and tapped his finger on the word ‘ATREBATE’.
“These are the Atrebates. They are a Belgic tribe within the heart of Britannia, closely tied with their namesake around Nemetocenna. They are one of the very few peoples on this island in whom I have any confidence of support and this is the supposed site of their main oppidum, called Calleva. They will supply us with the cavalry that we are lacking, I am certain.”
“That’s a hundred miles away, Caesar” Brutus said quietly.
“Yes. A long way, and through potentially dangerous lands. No Roman would make it there, I’m sure. Perhaps one of the Belgae, though…”
Galronus nodded slowly.
“It is possible, Caesar. We would have to travel fast and light.”
“Agreed. How long do you think it would take?”
Galronus tapped his lip, glancing across the map. “Four days each way. Plus allow a day for errors. We are entirely unfamiliar with this land and could easily find ourselves off course.”
“And that is catering for the safety and wellbeing of your horses?”
“Yes, general. Four days and the horses will be comfortable.”
“Then push them a little. Make it three days each way. And I will allow the Atrebates two days to assemble their forces for me. That is a week in total. Can you do that?”
“The horses will be strained, but it is possible, Caesar.”
“Do it. As soon as we adjourn here, I want you to take most of your turma of cavalry and bring me the Atrebates. Leave us only half a dozen horsemen for scouting duties.”
Galronus saluted and stepped back. Fronto could see the strain in his friend’s face as the Remi officer had bitten off his argument over the safety of the horses.
“Alright, gentlemen. Let us get down to the detailed planning.”
* * * * *
Fronto started awake at the call for the dawn watch, his uncomfortable cot almost folding up beneath him as he rolled across to sit on the edge and rub his knee, blinking bleary eyes. Four days had passed since Galronus had taken his riders and disappeared to the west to track down the Atrebates. In that time he’d spent most of his free time alone. Carbo and Atenos were almost constantly busy with their duties and, despite recent revelations and attitude changes, he still felt uncomfortable with the idea of inviting Furius and Fabius to socialise with him. Besides, they would likely be as busy as his own centurions. And Brutus was the almost continual companion of the general.
The next morning he’d geared up to visit Caesar and discuss the matter of the tribunes with him, but had come to the conclusion that he really did not feel well enough disposed toward the general at the moment to visit his on personal terms.
And so he’d busied himself with the daily routine of a legate, such as it was in a time of tense uncertainty. The Seventh had been given the task of foraging for food in the area and were not making a bad job of it, while the Tenth had been tasked with the cutting and retrieval of timber and the construction of extra defences and a few timber buildings.
The drumming of heavy rain on the leather roof of the tent soured his mood as it had done each of the past three mornings.
The weather had gradually worsened since the rains began. There had been but a few hours of dry here and there; not even long enough for the ground to dry out. The sun had hardly shown its face at all and when it had, it had been a pale white watery thing behind a veil of grey.
Yesterday, though, had seen a turn for the worse. A storm had hit in the late afternoon and had continued to ravage the coast into the night as Fronto had wrapped up tight in his wool blankets and eventually fallen into an uncomfortable sleep, dreaming of warm afternoons in the lush vineyards near the family’s estate at Puteoli.
This morning sounded little different from last night’s unpleasantness, apart from the notable absence of the thunder.
While the half dozen timber and wattle structures that had been hastily constructed had been put aside for the food, wool and linen supplies, and for the armoury, Fronto was starting to consider moving his cot in there and sleeping among the grain or the armour.
Yawning, he stood and stretched, crossing to the tent flap, his bare feet cold on the rush mat that served as a floor and kept away the worst of the moisture. It was only as he neared the doorway, fastened with ties, that he became aware of another noise behind the constant hammering of the rain.
Shouting.
Panicked shouting.
Fronto felt his pulse quicken. Battle? Had the Britons come again? No. It couldn’t be that. He’d heard the multitude of horns blowing the first watch, but no call to arms or any such message. So what was going on?
Quickly, he undid three of the door ties and ducked out into the pale, unpleasant dawn. The sun was barely up and the morning still had a faint purple
look to it. Men were rushing around the camp, their centurions bellowing, the optios hurrying the men along with an occasional wallop of their stick. The sheets of diagonal rain were so heavy and fast that it was difficult to see more than half a dozen tents away through the camp.
Aware that he was already getting drenched with only his top half poking out of the tent, Fronto spotted the transverse crest of a centurion and shouted at him, waving an arm. The man, commander of one of the centuries in the fifth cohort if Fronto remembered correctly, hurried over as soon as he heard the yelling above the insistent rain.
“What’s happening?”
“It’s the ships, sir.”
“What about them?”
“They’re sinking, sir.”
“Piss!”
The centurion paused for only a moment after Fronto disappeared inside again, dropping the tent flap, and then turned and ran on, back to his business. Inside, Fronto hurriedly pulled on his socks – doubling them over and wishing they weren’t still cold and soggy from the previous day – and slipped on his soft leather boots, noting with irritation the discolouration where the expensive leather had been ruined by the water. No matter how many times he’d intended to speak to Cita about new boots, for some reason he’d never got round to it. Damn Lucilia and her need to rearrange him! His old boots would have kept him nice and dry.
Deciding against armour, he quickly threw his baldric over his shoulder, letting the gladius fall into place at his side, and grabbed his cloak, wincing at the chilly dampness of the wet wool. Choosing not to enfold himself too tightly in the unpleasant garment, he held it over his head to shield the worst of the downpour and, taking a deep breath, ducked through the entrance again and out into the pelting rain.
Now, parties of men had been organised, running down toward the beach and the landing site with tools or carrying armfuls of pre-planed timber. Having crossed the water with only the lightest of supplies, there were far fewer tools and nails among the legions than would normally be the case.
Centurions were yelling at their men and Fronto spotted Brutus in the downpour also making for the beach.
“Trouble with the ships?”
Brutus glanced around in the rain, finally recognising the figure of Fronto cowled beneath the sodden cloak. The young legate of the Eighth shook the excess water from his hair and ran a hand down his face and neck in a futile attempt to dry them a little.
“So I hear. Come on.”
The two officers jogged down the grassy path toward the beach, out through the gate of the twin-legion fort that had been constructed, across the short no-man’s land, and then in through the separate fortified enclosure that surrounded the fleet’s landing site.
Such was the limited visibility in the torrents of water that it was not until they had reached the pebbled surface of the beach that the two men began to make out the shadowy bulks of the ships protruding from the seething waters. Legionaries were hard at work, waist deep in the sea, while centurions and optios bellowed orders from the beach. A contubernium of eight men held a huge leather sheet up as a shelter while others crouched beneath with tinder, kindling and the least soaked wood they could find, totally failing to start a fire over which they could melt tar for the caulking of seams.
It took Fronto only a moment to spot Furius and Fabius standing close together on the shingle. The former was bellowing at a soldier so loudly and so close that it looked as though the legionary might fall over under the blast of abuse. Fabius was frowning and scratching his head. As Fronto gestured to Brutus and strode over to them, the legionary scurried off to correct whatever he’d done.
“What’s happening?”
The centurions looked up in unison and saluted the two senior officers.
“Problems with the ships.”
“Like what?”
“All sorts. A lot of those Gallic ships that hit ground first have sprung a few leaks. They must have been damaged when they hit, but we’ve only found out about it now because the storm’s wrenched them free and they’ve started to fill with water.” Furius shook his head in exasperation. “Should have seen that coming.”
Fabius pointed out to the north and Fronto could just make out a mess that looked like a ship-collision. “Several of the triremes were also damaged in the storm. They were ripped free of their anchors and smashed into each other.”
Brutus pinched the bridge of his nose. “Sounds like a disaster. Will we salvage everything?”
“Too soon to tell yet, sir. Maybe half the ships in total are letting in water to some extent, though some are worse than others, of course. We’re working to secure the better ones first in case we have to cut our losses.”
“Bloody wonderful” Fronto raged. “That’s our ride home compromised. I’m really beginning to side with Cicero on this. The man might be defying Caesar at every turn but on this matter, I think he’s right. This entire campaign was a fool’s errand.”
Brutus turned to his fellow legate. “How cramped would you say we were on the way over?”
“I wouldn’t have wanted many more on our ship…” he caught Brutus’ serious and worried gaze and thought hard. “Space-wise we could probably fit half as many again, though it would be very cramped.”
Brutus nodded. “I was picturing a similar figure. And we can bear in mind that on the return journey we won’t be carrying the supplies we did on the way here. Also, and I know it sounds callous, but we lost about sixty men in the landing. That’s almost half a ship’s worth of passengers. So by my reckoning we could just about manage to ship the whole army back with two thirds of the vessels.”
“I suppose so” Fronto admitted unhappily, remembering the unpleasant crossing and trying to imagine how it would feel with crowded conditions added. “Don’t like it, though.”
“Would you prefer to winter in Britannia?”
“Shit, no. I’ll swim back if I have to.”
Brutus cast a glance up and down the beach, trying to take stock of the grey bulks rising from the waves, some of which were clearly moving far too freely for comfort. Wiping the dripping water from the end of his nose, he turned to the two centurions.
“Find Marcinus. He’s a centurion in your legion who served with Pompey against the pirates. I’ve spoken to him and he’s got a remarkable grasp of naval matters. Get him to survey the ships as quickly as he can with some help and separate out those that can be saved and those that can’t. Then get to work tearing apart those that are lost and use their timbers, pegs and caulking to repair the rest. It’ll be ten times as fast as cutting and planing the timber to fit and manufacturing the caulk. We sacrifice the bad to save the good, like a surgeon.”
Furius and Fabius saluted and turned to go about the work as the young legate smiled at Fronto, rubbing the back of his neck and shuddering at the cold rivulets of water running down inside his tunic.
“That ought to save enough to carry the army at a push.”
Fronto nodded unhappily, unable to shake the image of two hundred men pressed almost back to back in a small vessel among the buffeting waves – horrible.
This campaign was rapidly turning into Fronto’s least favourite military action of all time. He was willing to face any human or even animal enemy in the world, but when their enemy appeared to be a combination of the elements, the Gods and their own leaders’ bad decisions, what army stood a chance?
“Let me know what happens. I will be in my tent.” Glancing back at the roiling, heaving waves and the broken ribs of some of the ships he shuddered.
“And drunk” he added.
* * * * *
Rufus peered out from the timber-floored walkway above the gate in the new defences that surrounded Gesoriacum. The legion had done itself proud, digging a good ditch and raising a mound and palisade, clearing the woodland for almost half a mile around the settlement to provide the necessary timber. Despite the unpleasant conditions, visibility was reasonable now. No enemy could easily get near the defences without
plenty of warning.
Not for the first time in the past few days he wished word would arrive from the other legions out there under the command of Sabinus and Cotta. It was almost as if that unpleasant ground mist that had resulted from the inclement weather had swallowed whole anything that left Gesoriacum. Not only had there been no word from the other legions, but the cohort he’d sent off to track down the missing supply train had now been gone long enough to be worrying. At a forced march, which was what they were intending, they should have reached Nemetocenna and returned by now with news.
So no sister legions. No news of the supplies and now no news from a vanished cohort. Add to that the mysterious disappearance of the cavalry’s fleet and it was starting to feel very nerve-wracking indeed. Moreover, two days ago, Varus had ridden east with half of his cavalry wing in an attempt to locate and bring back the missing legions.
It had reached a point where Rufus was baulking at the thought of even sending out short patrols in case they disappeared into the mist and never returned.
The optio commanding the gate’s guard gave him a nervous look and he hadn’t the heart to admonish the man for showing his worry in front of the men. Every man in Gesoriacum felt the same, and Rufus was very aware of the fact. A wary, nervous silence covered the entire town, including the civilian settlement, as though they knew something was coming. Rarely was a local face even to be seen in the streets now.
“Carry on. Send word the instant there’s any news” he commanded, somewhat redundantly – there was little doubt that word would come at a run if anything changed. The men patrolling the walls were a little too thinly-spread around the civilian town’s defences for Rufus’ liking, but it couldn’t be helped. He had committed as many men to that line as he was willing to spare. The harbour was slightly better defended, with men in tall timber watchtowers with signal fires to warn of any seaborne trouble. But most of the troops, including a large number of dismounted cavalry, were concentrated in the fort on the hill above Gesoriacum.
Marius' Mules IV: Conspiracy of Eagles Page 37