Tribune Menenius of the Fourteenth sat alone on the bench, the rest of the men keeping away from him — possibly out of respect for his rank, though Fronto somehow doubted it. The youthful, foppish tribune looked utterly dejected and a little frightened.
Once again, Fronto cursed his luck for ending up with the ineffectual little turd as a second in command. It would be easy to blame Plancus, the legate of the Fourteenth, but Fronto knew deep down it was a symptom of having lost his Fortuna pendant.
The plan had been simple enough: to take the boats the Ubii had donated and use them to ferry a small force across, downriver and out of sight, then to move stealthily up the east bank and fall on the archers that plagued the building work.
Simple.
So simple that anyone could have commanded it.
A dozen Ubii scouts had been brought into the force, but the bulk of the expedition would be made up of the men of the Fourteenth: Gauls themselves, who may be able to pass as locals along with the scouts during the stealthy approach. So simple.
Until Plancus had volunteered to lead the mission, given that it was his men who had been selected. Fronto had suffered a momentary premonition of how the attack might proceed under the cretinous direction of the unimaginative legate of the Fourteenth. So harrowing was his mental image that he had found himself standing forward and demanding that he lead the attack, it being his idea. Plancus had been so outraged he had almost spat teeth, but Fronto was adamant; his plan, his responsibility.
And so, having tricked himself into coming along, he had added a century of his own men from the Tenth into the force, troops upon whom he knew he could rely. Specifically the men of Atenos, the first century of the second cohort, a number of whom shared the Gallic origin of their officer. It seemed the only sensible course of action.
Yet Plancus had still refused to relinquish control of his men to his brother legate and the resulting appointment had left a sour taste in Fronto’s mouth. Menenius, a junior tribune with, apparently, no combat experience, would accompany him as a second.
The tribune looked up from beneath his sodden brown cloak, feeling the eyes of the other two officers on him. He cast an unhappy glance back at them and then lowered his eyes to his feet once more, lifting his sopping boots from the three inches of water that filled the bottom of the boat — yet another thing that sent cold shudders down Fronto’s spine.
Like it or not, he was clearly saddled with this man. Gritting his teeth and holding his breath, the legate of the Tenth nodded to Atenos and stood, rocking unsteadily as he gingerly made his way along the wide, flat craft between the legionaries pressed together against the rain, rowing for all they were worth to try and stay with the other boats despite the unbelievably strong current.
With a great sense of relief, Fronto arrived at the space around the tribune and sank to the bench opposite. Menenius looked up and tried to smile. The man looked like a fish — a fish out of water, Fronto thought sourly. The legate smiled with forced sympathy at his second in command.
“You don’t like boats either?” he hazarded, well aware in truth of the cause of the man’s nerves, but offering him an out.
Menenius sniffed, a droplet of mucus forming on the end of his nose like a six year old, which made Fronto simultaneously want to wipe it away and cuff him around the ear.
“Once we land, stick close to me. Your best centurion in the unit is Cantorix. I’ve met him before and seen him in action. When I give orders, Atenos will deal with his century. You relay them to Cantorix and he’ll diffuse them as necessary among the other three centurions from the Fourteenth. If we get separated, remember the goal. Go as stealthily as you can to the bank opposite the bridge and separate out into a wide arc before you pounce, so they have less chance of getting away. Then keep moving the arc around so you can close them in against the bank.”
The look of panic that flashed across Menenius’ face only served to increase the ire in Fronto, but he held his breath and forced the patience back into his voice.
“Have you had no experience of a fight at all? You’ve been a junior tribune for more than a year now in different legions. You must have been in the battles we’ve fought?”
“I’ve stood at the back, Fronto. I’ve occasionally had a musician send messages when required. I’m not at all cut out for this kind of thing, though. This is what centurions are for, isn’t it?”
Fronto smiled, though without genuine humour.
“The centurions will do nearly everything. Just stick with me.” He reached out and tapped the ornate scabbard of the tribune’s gladius. “With any luck you won’t need to use that.”
Menenius looked at the sword and sighed. Reaching down, he drew it slowly with a well-oiled hiss.
Fronto eyed the blade as it came free. Despite the showy scabbard and the eagle-embossed pommel, the blade itself was rust-free and unpitted, perfectly oiled and maintained and clearly sharp. Near the point where the tip began to taper, a pair of small nicks was visible.
“You keep your gladius in good condition, but it seems to be marked?”
Menenius looked at the blade in surprise, then spotted the nicks and nodded unhappily.
“My father. It was his sword. He served under Sertorius in Hispania — with distinction apparently, a fact that he never let me forget until his dying day. I sometimes suspect that if I let the blade rust, he’ll find a way to come back from the dead just to punish me.”
Fronto sagged. The tribune was clearly more suited to some administrative role somewhere.
“Just stay close and try to stay alive.”
Menenius nodded unhappily. “I wish Hortius was here. He’d know what to say.”
Fronto cast thanks up to the heavens to any God that was listening that this wasn’t the case, but fixed the fake smile of sympathy to his face again and turned at a shout from Atenos.
“We’re closing on the bank, sir.”
Sinking to the bench, the legate grasped the side of the boat again and clung on, watching the grassy slope approach at a worrying speed. Despite the swiftness of the river, the boats had managed to stay in reasonable formation, drifting downriver only a little more than planned.
The surface of the Rhenus hissed and spat as the rain hammered down into it, the boat’s bottom wallowing in several inches of freezing water. Fronto felt the numbing cold seeping in through the soft leather of his girlish boots and saturating the socks beneath and once again cursed Lucilia for offloading them on him and disposing of his good old hard boots. He really must get around to getting a new pair from Cita. Lucilia need never know.
The boat hit the bank with a crunch, jerking forward for a moment, the occupants lurching around briefly before leaping into action. At Atenos’ command, two men leapt over the bow with a mooring rope. One produced his mallet and a heavy wooden stake and proceeded to smash the peg into the ground to make a mooring post, while the other looped the rope ready and then tied it off on the heavy stake.
As soon as the boat was secured, the rest of the legionaries and the optio disembarked and began to disperse. Less than half a minute after the boat had touched earth, the men were formed up on the grassy rise, while the two Ubii scouts drifted toward the edge of the woods that surrounded them.
Fronto clambered from the boat with a great sigh of relief, feeling his gut begin to steady itself again and his bowels unclench for the first time in twenty minutes. Scanning the ground, he nodded to himself. The landing site had been well chosen. Three miles downriver, the boats would have been invisible from the building site as they crossed even in clear weather. In this torrential downpour, they would be obscured from even close range. The landing was a gentle, grassy slope where the legionaries could assemble.
Around the river-side clearing, the woodland stretched out who knew how far. This territory was beyond the ken of any of them and the forest could cover every inch from here to the end of the world for all they knew. But as long as they kept the river in view to their rig
ht, they would locate the construction site and the enemy enclave opposite soon enough.
It seemed odd to look at the men formed up as they were: in the efficient lines of parading legionaries, yet dressed so nondescript.
The reasoning had been simple: They would in theory need only a small force to deal with the lightly armoured archers they were to face and, between the element of surprise, their superior tactics and discipline and the quality of their weapons, they should not need their pila, helmets, shields or any such kit that would clearly mark them as Roman to even the least observant passer-by.
And so the men of the Tenth and Fourteenth stood with the disciplined straight backs and raised chins of the legions, wrapped in plain wool cloaks, their only concession to equipment shirts of mail and a gladius on their belts hidden beneath the folds of wool.
In a way it irritated Fronto that while, for the first time this year, he had the opportunity to control and command a military mission with a simple battle objective and no argument, discussion, or treachery, it still required subterfuge and sneaking. It would have been nice to arm up like a legion at war and tramp the grass toward a prepared and worthy enemy, rather than to run through the woods in disguise and fall upon a poorly-armed and soggy missile unit.
Somewhere deep inside, Fronto chided himself for hoping that the enemy were better armed and prepared than expected and the possibility of a proper fight, but looking across at Atenos, he realised that the big man was clearly thinking along similar lines.
Still, a fight was a fight, and anything was better than endless arguing while good men were knifed in the back by their own side.
Menenius fell in beside him, one hand wrapped around the hilt of the gladius beneath his cloak, the fingers white with pressure.
“The last of the boats is landing, legate” he reported, his voice cracking slightly with nerves.
The men poured out of the boats and fell in alongside those already gathered in the clearing. Fronto looked across the force: five centuries of troops. Three hundred and eighty two men, given the fallen and casualties back across the river; plus the two senior officers and twenty native scouts.
Four hundred and four men. And of them, perhaps only fifty who had no command of the Gallic language. Hopefully, if anything went horribly wrong, the Ubii scouts would be able to handle it, claiming to be the warriors of a large Ubii village from downriver, forced south by Suevi advances. The women and children and wagons would be following on.
“You all know why we’re here” he shouted through the siling rain. “To finish the bridge, the enemy archers on this bank must be dealt with. We have no idea about the disposition of enemy forces on this side of the river, so go carefully and quietly. If I hear a single Latin word spoken aloud once we leave this clearing, I’ll tear that man’s balls off and nail them to a tree as a warning to the rest.”
The officers, of course, were discounted from such strictures, given Fronto and Menenius’ almost total lack of comprehension of the local language. But then the tribune hardly seemed his usual loquacious self and, given the way he was still shaking gently, he was unlikely to draw any attention to them in enemy territory. And Fronto knew he could restrain himself.
“Leave any encounter to the Ubii if you can. If not, let those with the best Belgic dialects handle it. There should be very few native settlements or groups around here. The Ubii are all on the move due to the advances of enemy tribes, so it’s likely that anyone we meet will be hostile. I’m afraid we’ll just have to play it by ear. Listen to your officers and do your duty and in a few hours we’ll have cleared out the east bank and Caesar’s bridge will be marching toward us again. Right,” he pointed to the woodland at the northern side of the clearing where two Ubii scouts were waiting patiently “move out!”
“It’s a local farm” Cantorix said, so quietly he was barely audible over the rain. “Still occupied apparently. Though I see no animals, there’s smoke pouring out of the roof hole.”
Fronto leaned against the tree. For two miles as they had crept through the woodlands they had seen no sign of life, the only mark of habitation was one farmstead that had been burned out, leaving only shattered fences and the blackened stumps of a timber building. In a way, Fronto was pleased to discover life, as the journey had been too tense and silently uneventful for his liking; as if they were tip-toeing across a field where he knew there was a bull hidden in the mist.
“Anything else?”
Cantorix shook his head. “Just the smoke from the hearth. I’ve sent the scouts out to circle through the surrounding woods, just in case.”
The legate nodded. Two of the Ubii remained with them at the heart of the expeditionary force to act as advisors and, if necessary, interpreters. Turning, one hand on the hilt of his gladius, Fronto shook his head, creating a cascade of water from his sodden hair, and gestured to one of the guides, pointing at the farmstead, barely visible through the boles of the trees.
“What’s your opinion?”
“Commander?”
“Is it likely we would encounter an isolated farm still occupied by your people, but without animals?”
The scout shrugged.
“Many still trap this side of river. They leave village; go hide when enemy near; then come back when they gone. Could be.”
The legate sighed. Hardly conclusive, as answers went.
“We’ll wait for the scouts to check out the woods before we move through.”
Menenius, standing nearby with wild, nervous eyes, nodded emphatically.
The men stood among the trees, so many drab shapes blending in with the endless trunks of the woods, the rain here channelled from a constant battering force to form heavy, huge droplets that fell, swollen, from leaves and branch-tips, drenching the men beneath.
“That’s the signal” murmured Cantorix.
Fronto, Menenius and Atenos stepped forward to peer between the grey boles to the misty, rain-occluded farmstead. It took them a moment to see the scouts and the legate could only commend the centurion on his eyesight. Barely visible across the farm clearing, two of the Ubii had reappeared and stood, tiny figures in a grey, wet world, waving their arm in the signal that all was clear.
The officers deflated slightly.
“Menenius? You and Cantorix take these two scouts and go speak to the farmers. We should be able to get a good deal of information about the current situation in the area. Cantorix: take a few of your men in with you but not enough to frighten the civilians. The others can form a perimeter around the building. The rest of you, with Atenos and myself, will scatter in groups around the farmstead and search, consolidate and hold until we’re ready to move off again. We should be on the enemy archers sometime in the next half hour or so.”
The officers all nodded and moved off; Menenius hovering all too close to Cantorix for a Roman tribune. Fronto caught the Gallic centurion’s expression at being saddled with the fop and tried not to grin.
With long-practiced hand signals, Fronto directed the centurions who stayed with him, splitting them into four groups, two of which would move around the edge of the clearing, one in each direction, keeping the woodland under surveillance alongside the scouts, while the other two would spread out across the farmstead and its buildings.
The legate grinned happily as he moved along the eastern edge of the clearing, imagining the fun Cantorix was going to have with Menenius and the scouts in the farmer’s hut.
The centurion of the unit with whom Fronto moved pointed to the two scouts standing by the wood’s edge, others having now returned from the shadowed forest. The two men were waving their arms again and gesturing. The centurion, his voice low and in Latin but with a noticeable Gallic accent, leaned close. “What do they want now?”
Fronto shrugged. “Best check.”
The centurion nodded, made a couple of arcane signals to his optio and then jogged off forward to the two scouts, who were gesticulating expansively. As the centurion closed on them, the optio
strolled up alongside Fronto.
“The men are separating out into contubernia to patrol the edge, sir.”
The legate nodded his understanding and squinted through the rain at the scene ahead.
“Why are they waving like that when we have so many arranged hand signals?”
He felt the optio stiffen beside him and the man’s hand grabbed his upper arm.
“Because they aren’t Ubii, sir!”
Fronto frowned as the centurion ahead reached the two scouts, demanding quietly of them what all the fuss was. The legate jerked back as he saw the tip of the Germanic long sword suddenly burst from the centurion’s back in a shower of blood. Even as the forest’s edge erupted with warriors, Fronto turned to order the musician and signifer to raise the alarm, but too late. A bellow of shocked pain rang out from the farmer’s hut and was immediately joined by others from the various buildings as the trap snapped shut.
The discordant, horrible Celtic horns rang out and Fronto was drawing his sword and letting his cloak fall to the floor even as he saw Cantorix stagger out of the central hut clutching his side and swinging his sword, bellowing at his men. No sign of Menenius yet. Suddenly, what looked like half the world’s barbarians were pouring from the treeline into the clearing.
The cornicen a few yards from Fronto was busy bleating out the alarm when the notes became a gurgle, a tribesman’s sword slamming into his neck in a backslash hard enough to snap the spine. In a sudden explosion of activity they were in the midst of battle. The century around Fronto hadn’t had the time and warning to form a defensive line and lacked shields and helmets, the fighting already devolving into a melee of individual duels.
There was no opportunity to call out a strategy or gather the men to him.
Turning again, his sword out, Fronto barely had time to raise it and knock aside the blow that was coming for him, the sheer strength of the strike when the blades met numbing his arm and sending shock waves through the joints up to his shoulder. He looked into the eyes of his opponent, a Germanic brute a good foot taller than he, with a dense, unkempt beard and his hair only kept from his eyes by a topknot. The man wore nothing but bronze arm-rings and a torc at his neck, his nakedness no shame or hardship in combat, with designs drawn on his chest in black mud. His eyes bore that crazed, unstoppable look that Fronto had seen before. A man who could only be stopped with a hard death.
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