Marius' Mules IV: Conspiracy of Eagles

by S. J. A. Turney

  Nodding to the legionaries by the gate, he strode down the slope of the embankment on the wooden log steps, alighting on the muddy thoroughfare that had somehow – perhaps mistakenly – been termed a street rather than merely a muddy stream. Sighing and wishing that the locals had adopted a good flagged-or-cobbled road surface, he sloshed and squelched back towards the main ‘road’ that led through the town from the harbour up to the fort on the hill.

  His boots began to leak almost instantly, and he felt the cold, wet muck oozing into the holes in the leather, gritting his teeth against the unpleasantness. What he wouldn’t give for a bath house, rather than a horse trough of cold water and a wool blanket.

  Miserably, he trudged back into the centre of the town, pausing at the junction and wondering whether he should visit the harbour before returning to the fort. He glanced to his left, up the slope, trying not to notice the slurry slipping down the incline with the water that still seemed to be flowing from last night’s torrential downpour. He shuddered, but welcomed the sight of the burning torches on the timber walls of the fort – mere spots of light at this distance; fireflies in the mist. For all its discomfort, the fort was essentially home at the moment. His gaze then turned the other way, down the main street, also filled with running brown and lumpy water. Behind and above the squat stone and timber shops and houses of the natives he could just make out the tops of the harbour watchtowers, their torches also burning in the grey.

  No. The harbour could wait until tomorrow. Now it was time to get indoors and warm up if such a thing were remotely possible.

  His gaze swept around again to face up the slope to his destination, but lingered for a moment on the side-street that ran down into the backwaters of the native settlement directly opposite. Three figures had rounded a corner at the far end and were making their way toward the junction. The very presence of human life in the street was now a rare enough occurrence as to attract attention, but there was something about the figures that somehow caught his gaze and held it.

  Squinting into the dismal grey, he could just discern that the three were wearing heavy wool cloaks and it took only a moment before he realised they were military cloaks. The three men were soldiers.

  Blinking, he strained to see better and was suddenly rewarded with a flash of white. The man in the middle was a tribune. Cilo, then: still trying to squeeze supplies out of an uncooperative and reticent town. His results had been poor, though Rufus was under no illusions that anyone else would have fared any better. For some reason the townsfolk were less willing to help than he’d even expected.

  He tutted to himself at the man’s short-sightedness. He’d told Cilo to just take a small bodyguard, but he’d really meant more than two men. A contubernium of eight would have been more sensible. He’d have to have a word with the man.

  His heart skipped a beat.

  While the three men moved hurriedly up the street toward the junction, another cloaked soldier had just rounded the corner from whence they’d just come.

  “What the hell?”

  His heart began to hammer out an urgent tattoo in his chest as he watched the newly-visible legionary stumble out across the street, a sword glinting in his hand, before falling face first into the murk, shaking with agony. Rufus’ heart sank as his gaze refocused on the three men approaching and he realised for the first time that the two legionaries were not just escorting the tribune up the street – they were carrying him, dragging him by the shoulders, his toes bouncing off jutting stones among the muck. One of the soldiers was also limping badly, and the other had a naked blade in his hand.

  “Oh, shit!”

  As if to confirm his worst fears, a sudden roar split the silent miasma as a huge crowd of natives rounded that same corner at a run, brandishing weapons and bellowing war-cries.

  Rufus felt the first wave of panic wrenching at his mind as he turned to check the other streets. Though he could see no further sign of an uprising, a distant roar echoed up the main street just as two beacons sprang to life atop the harbour watch towers. Cold fear gripping him, Rufus spun again at the sound of a scream and then the clash of steel at the east gate that he had just left.

  Cursing under his breath, he turned back to the three men rushing towards him and beckoned desperately.

  Damn it! He’d known something was wrong and he’d taken every precaution he could think of to protect Gesoriacum. No officer would have done it better, and few would have managed what he had, given his resources. But he’d been wrong-footed in the worst possible way. He’d given Gesoriacum adequate protection against anything except its own citizens.

  A local uprising hadn’t even occurred to him.

  The Morini had risen.

  As the three soldiers reached him, the legionaries turned the corner, dragging the limp figure of Cilo. Rufus’ heart jumped again as he realised how close the mob was. The four of them would quite clearly never make it back to the fort in time like this.

  Falling in next to them, he glanced at the tribune. Now that he was closer he could see the extent of the officer’s wound between the flapping folds of cloak. The man’s white tunic was soaked crimson with his blood, centred around a wide slash that had cut the man’s gut almost from side to side. Even as he moved, Rufus saw a hint of purple intestine through the blood-soaked tunic.

  Reaching across, he put two of his fingers to Cilo’s neck just beneath the jaw line. The pulse was hardly there at all.

  “Leave him!”

  “Sir?” One of the legionaries stared at him in disbelief.

  “He’s a dead man; as we’ll be if we don’t leave him.”

  “He’s alive, sir.”

  Rufus reached across and jerked Cilo’s arm from the legionary’s shoulder. The dying tribune slumped between them.

  “He’ll be dead before we reach the gate. Leave him; that’s an order!”

  The other legionary released his grip on the tribune’s right arm and the officer collapsed to the floor, too far gone to even groan at the agony. The body slapped into the mud and shit, one leg shaking involuntarily.

  “Come on!” Rufus bellowed, already breaking into a run. Next to him, the two legionaries sprang to life, racing after him. A count of five heartbeats later, half the population of Gesoriacum rounded the corner, yelling and waving swords, spears, axes and even tree branches.

  “We’re in the shit, sir!”

  “Not if we can reach the fort. We can last a siege for at least a month there.”

  Up the slope they pounded, trying not to lose their footing in the slippery muck that flowed down the hill into the town. With a cry in familiar Latin, three legionaries suddenly dropped over a side wall from a garden to their left – some of the defenders of the town’s new walls, no doubt. From their urgency and curses it was clear that they also ran from pursuing natives.

  “Report!” he bellowed between laboured breaths as they came alongside the new arrivals, one of whom was clutching a wounded, bloody arm, all three held swords, their shields abandoned in the rush to clamber over the walls.

  The legionary glanced at the speaker in surprise and realised that it was his senior commander. Between wheezing breaths, he shouted as they ran.

  “The wall’s over… overrun, sir. Dozens of ‘em… they… they came from every… everywhere inside the town… The lads on the… wall and down at the port…. are screwed, sir.”

  “They control… the town now…. then?”

  “Yessir. And… and I think there’s… more coming out… of the woods.”

  “The whole... damned tribe, then!”

  Rufus fell silent, saving his breath for the run, grateful for the fact that his military boots with their hobnailed soles gave him a better grip on the mucky slope than civilian wear would. It also gave them the edge over the mob that chased them up the hill who were struggling to keep their feet at speed, several going over in the mud and crap.

  Ahead, the fort walls loomed ever closer and finally, in the murky gre
y, the shapes of individual men resolved themselves on the parapet. Finally the alarm went up inside; the poor visibility must have prevented the fort’s soldiers from spotting the warning beacons at the harbour.

  It was a disaster all round.

  “Open the damn gate” Rufus bellowed at the top of his voice. Figures were moving around the gate now, and more and more heads and torches began to appear along the wall, backed by the bellow of numerous buccinae and cornu.

  The din was growing detestable as the six men closed on the fort, the cacophony of a legion preparing itself for action mixing with the unintelligible cries and curses of the Morini mob behind them.

  A loud tortured groan arose from the walls ahead of them and, despite expecting it, Rufus flinched as the scorpion released with a ‘crack’, sending a foot-long bolt down the slope. Despite the skills of the artillerists, the bolt whipped over the heads of the mob and disappeared down into the town harmlessly.

  “Angle it down more, you idiots!” Rufus snapped as he bore down on the gate, whose left hand leaf was now swinging open.

  In response a second scorpion from the other side of the gate released with a ‘crack’, the bolt whistling over the heads of the six soldiers with only two or three feet to spare. Rufus felt his bowels clench involuntarily at the shot as the passage of the bolt actually ruffled his hair. He was about to snap out a curse at the firer when a shriek of pain and the sound of falling behind them confirmed the perfect accuracy of the shot.

  Rufus clamped his mouth shut and hurtled through the gate, the others close at his heel.

  “Close it!” he cried, somewhat unnecessarily, given the fact that the portal had already begun to swing shut as they passed through it.

  Above, an unseen centurion bellowed out the order for pilum fire and there was the distinctive noise of dozens of missiles arcing out into the air, followed by the thud and rip of the javelins falling into a mass of men, then the screams of the wounded and dying.

  The duty centurion stomped towards the six men as they variously bent double, clutching their knees and spitting or leaned heavily against timber and coughed painfully, heaving in breaths.

  “Anyone else likely to come back, sir?”

  Rufus blinked away the sweat and focused on the centurion.

  “I very much doubt it. They’ve got the town’s defences under their control, as well as the port. Watch those two points where the walls meet the fort very carefully and get a good force there. As soon as you’re sure it’s safe enough, get some men out there and tear down a five yard section of the new town walls. I want plenty of open ground around the fort. We don’t know how many of them there are or what they want.”

  He straightened. “But they’ve clearly planned this for a while, and there are other Morini coming from nearby to their aid, so I think we have to assume we’re here for a while. I’m hoping it’s just a small rabble of local civilians that we can draw out into open battle and flatten, but I have the horrible feeling that we’re looking at a sizeable uprising that we’re woefully ill-equipped to deal with until one of the other legions makes contact.”

  The centurion nodded professionally.

  “Then we’d best settle in and hope we can get control of the situation before the general returns, sir.”

  Rufus felt his heart sink again. They’d lost the port and there was no way to warn Caesar. Where was Fortuna when she was really needed?

  Chapter 17

  (South east Britannia)

  Lucius Fabius, centurion of the third century, first cohort of the Seventh legion, gestured at a chattering legionary with his vine stick.

  “I’m watching you, Statilius. Shut your trap and concentrate on your job. We need to be back in the camp by nightfall and you are without a doubt, the laziest, slowest, most pointless dullard I’ve ever seen don a tunic. How in Hades you manage to get it on the right way round every morning is beyond me. You must have helpful tent-mates.”

  The legionary flushed and the half dozen men scything the wheat awkwardly with their swords laughed.

  “And the rest of you shower of shit are little better. Shut up and work.”

  Turning his back on the labouring soldiers, the centurion spotted his colleague and old friend, Tullus Furius striding through the unevenly cut stubble, staff jammed under his arm and a look of irritation on his face.

  “We’ll never make it back to camp before dark with this lot. We might as well make the decision now. Do we leave some of the harvest, hope it survives the night well and come back in the morning, or keep working into the dark and hope we find our way back without too much trouble?”

  “I say we keep working. It’s only three miles and pretty much a straight line. We can – Legionary Macrobius, if I see you put that sword down or take that helmet off, you will be emptying latrines with your remaining hand for the next month, while I use the other as a back-scratcher. You got that?”

  The legionary saluted, almost concussing himself with the hilt of his gladius. Furius rolled his eyes as he turned back to his companion.

  “This legion is a shambles. At least if Caesar had left it as he found it, they’d have been a proper unit, and not just a patchwork collection of misfits. Half the bloody centurions don’t seem to have a clue. Did you know that Lutorius has half of his men loading the grain into the wagons without wearing their armour or helmets? The prat’s even got their swords lying in a heap while they work. I swear I had to clench my fists to prevent myself beating the idiot.”

  “Similar story all round. Look at the amount of tunics you can see without armour. Pompey would have had half of them strung up by now. This army’s soft.”

  “This legion’s soft. Since the beach escapade I’ve been keeping an eye on Fronto’s Tenth. They’re actually pretty well organised and drilled. And Brutus’ Eighth when we were back in Gaul were in top condition. It’s just this legion, mate. I tell you, by next spring I’m going to have the top spot – be primus pilus – and I’ll spend the winter kicking this shower of shit into shape.”

  “With any luck we’ll both be able to move up and sort this lot out. Fronto’s a good enough lad, but he’s still a bit lax and disorganised. It irks me that his legion should be so much better than ours.”

  “Here’s to that. And to the Seventh being the best in the army by next spring.”

  The pair fell silent, taking in the scene around them. Existing rations had run out in the morning, after breaking their fast, and replenishing the stocks had been the first priority of the day. Early in the day, the Seventh had split into four groups of fifteen centuries apiece who had left the camp all with the same assignment: Find food. It didn’t matter what it was – animal, wheat, vegetables. So long as it would go in a pot or bake loaves, it was required. It had taken only two hours for the first section to come across a nicely hidden wide bowl of a valley, surrounded by woodland and filled with ripening white-gold wheat waiting for the harvest, which would be due at any time.

  Lutorius, the primus pilus of the legion and the senior centurion of their party had almost rubbed his hands with glee at the sight of enough grain to keep the two legions for the best part of a month. Another hour of searching the tracks that radiated into the woods had turned up the farms that cultivated the area, which supplied them with plenty of commandeered carts along with what could have been termed ‘nags’ if the speaker were being kind, as well as a few mangy oxen.

  Now, after four hours of cutting, binding, stacking and loading, the carts were laden with towering piles of wheat. The sun was already hovering over the tops of the trees in its ever swiftening descent to evening, and though much of the wheat had been harvested, still almost a quarter of the fields remained intact.

  The two centurions’ gaze both fell on Lutorius, standing among a collection of sheaves, snapping out orders. Each of the four legion vexillations had its nominal command. Cicero and one of the tribunes had taken their group north, the senior tribune Terrasidius and one of the others had taken a
group south. The three remaining junior tribunes had gone northwest – and were probably hopelessly lost, given the general abilities of their kind – while Lutorius had brought his command southwest.

  “Who’s going to persuade ‘blue eyes’ to stay after dark?”

  “I’ll do it. You’ve been pissing him off all day, so he won’t listen to you.”

  Furius nodded and Fabius turned to make his way over to the primus pilus, just in time to see an arrow whip out from the woodland that surrounded the golden field-bowl, smashing into Lutorius’ eye and driving into his brain, killing him instantly.

  The air suddenly filled with the thrum of arrows as men screamed and fell all around the clearing. Even as Furius turned to address the cornicen standing close by with his horn on his arm, Fabius bellowed “Shields! To Arms!”

  “Cornicen: Sound the alarm!”

  The musician put the horn to his lips, but all that came out of his mouth was a gobbet of blood as a thrown spear suddenly burst through his neck. His eyes went wide and he clutched at the crimson spear head sticking a foot from his front before toppling over forward, making a bubbling noise. Furius cursed.

  “Testudo! Form testudos!”

  The field was alive now with desperate legionaries. Furius and Fabius’ two centuries were already falling into formation, their shields coming up to form the missile-proof tortoise. The two centurions jogged across to their men, well aware that most of the centuries in the clearing were doomed, having dropped their shields and weapons and some even their armour while they worked. Men were being scythed down like the wheat they’d been harvesting.

  “Get to the centre! Collect your gear and get out of missile range!”

  It was all he could really do, and he hoped the other soldiers’ centurions would follow the lead and try to protect their commands. In the meantime, he and Fabius moved outside missile range, behind their centuries.