FIELDS OF MARS

by S. J. A. Turney

  ‘That will make us slow-moving and encumbered,’ Carbo murmured. ‘All it would take was for Afranius to learn of it and have the guts to commit a force and we could find ourselves butchered to a man in some barley field to the east.’

  ‘I know. It’s far from perfect. But at least it’s movement. At least we’ll be doing something other than slowly starving four miles from a content enemy.’

  ‘There is that,’ Atenos conceded.

  ‘Well, if that’s the plan,’ Carbo sighed, ‘we’d better start getting ready while it’s still early. The longer we wait the less day we’ll have to gather supplies once we cross.’

  * * *

  Carbo approached the bridge with a certain level of trepidation. There was something about pontoon bridges that always set his teeth on edge. A solid bridge, even one formed hastily of new-cut wood, remained still under your feet. A pontoon bridge, no matter how well constructed, always had a certain level of movement, stirred by the current beneath and about each boat. It should not, to Carbo’s mind, be possible to get seasick so many miles from the sea, but a grey face loomed in his future, he was sure.

  Ahead, the Seventh Legion was already across, moving out into cohorts and securing a bridgehead just in case, as the scouts spread out over half a mile or more, checking the surrounding countryside. Now, Carbo watched the support train of the Seventh crossing as he prepared to lead across the Tenth.

  The bridge was bending and shuddering with each clomp of a horse’s hoof and trundle of iron-shod wheel. Carbo shuddered again. It took half an hour just to get the animals and carts across, and Carbo would be willing to swear he was seeing the bridge deteriorate as he watched. Yet, finally, the last of the Seventh’s carts reached the east bank and crawled up to join its fellows in the protective arms of the legion.

  Carbo sighed. Plancus had tossed a coin to see who crossed the river first, and had won the toss. Or possibly lost. Carbo still wasn’t sure which he preferred.

  ‘Ready?’ Atenos murmured from nearby, quiet enough not to be heard by the waiting men.

  ‘Not really. I swear I saw a piece of that bridge break off and float away just now. Who built this? It wasn’t the Tenth.’

  ‘I’ve no idea. But it took the weight of the Seventh well enough.’

  ‘Fortunately I’ll be accompanying the rear guard, so this joy is yours.’

  Atenos chuckled. ‘See you across the Styx.’

  As he blew his whistle and waved on the First Cohort, Carbo made a warding sign against bad luck, cursing his friend for such a blithe yet dangerous joke. He sat with the tribunes – five young men who couldn’t tell a gladius from a bum hole, and one broad stripe who kept looking hungrily at him as though he felt Carbo was just keeping the uniform warm for him. Carbo hated tribunes. Their role in the legion remained largely mysterious to him even now he commanded one. Centurions kept things working from the top to the bottom, in camp, on the march, and in battle. The legate made the grand decisions, along with any imperator in command, and the camp prefect ran the camp. But tribunes? One just waiting for the legate's knotted belt, and five boys who were waiting to get home so they could watch girls swoon over what heroes they were. Pointless. In months of command all he had ever used the tribunes for was to deliver messages.

  He watched the First Cohort cross with the same feeling of nervousness. Every creak of timber or groan of a boat made him shiver. He definitely spotted half a cracked plank float off downstream toward Ilerda as the Second Cohort moved down the bank and tromped onto the timber boards nailed across the boats. Under his breath he uttered a prayer to the deity of these waters, whatever his name might be, that he be kind, and wished that his legionaries were capable of marching gently, without stamping their feet so.

  The Second Cohort passed across without incident and the Third followed on. By the time the Third was climbing the far bank and the Fourth already crossing, his fears had faded somewhat. He glanced past the other six cohorts to the wagon and beast train waiting patiently, and the six hundred cavalry who were bringing up the rear. Armies with wagons and oxen moved at a pace that would make a snail cry, and Carbo knew that all too well. Often, during their time in Gaul, Caesar had sacrificed ease of supplies and support for speed, leaving behind wagons and pack and marching just the legionaries at a good pace. Of course, they couldn’t do that here when the supply wagons were the whole reason for the crossing in the first place, but that didn’t make the coming slow slog through unknown land close to the enemy any more attractive.

  The Fifth and Sixth cohorts crossed. Carbo tried not to look too closely, yet still saw two pieces of timber drifting away down the river. He couldn’t definitively say they were part of the bridge and hadn’t been brought this far on the current, but he was willing to bet it.

  The Seventh and Eighth crossed, laughing and chattering carelessly, content in the knowledge that nothing nasty awaited them on the far side, with so many fellow legionaries already there and controlling the ground.

  Carbo tried to let the tension go out of him, counting up slowly in time with what he wished his pulse to be, and keeping going until his heart fell into step with the rhythm. More relaxed, finally, he opened his eyes.

  The Tenth Cohort was now stomping off across the bridge. There was a ligneous cracking noise and a deep groan and suddenly Carbo’s pulse was racing again, all his good work undone. He watched, tense, as the men crossed, unheeding, and climbed up the other side. The wagon drivers began to descend one after another and rumbled out onto the boards. Carbo looked back past the now greatly diminished waiting column. He could see Fabius and his legionary commanders standing on the ramparts and watching. His interest was piqued as he noticed the standards of the Ninth and Fourteenth moving out to the north slightly, just at the edge of the camp. What were they preparing for?

  The rumble of wheels and snort and stomp of animals drew him back. There was another deeply worrying groan from the crossing.

  ‘Wait here,’ he said to the small knot of tribunes, and trotted down toward the bridge. As he reached it, he looked out across it and realised he’d been right. He waved at the next cart. ‘Stay there. Don’t board the bridge yet.’ As the driver saluted and did as ordered, Carbo moved off onto the boards, carefully manoeuvring his horse alongside the slow-moving ox-carts.

  ‘Slow it down and space it out,’ Carbo yelled to the drivers. ‘You’re putting too much stress on the timber at once. You!’ he bellowed to the man he’d just passed. ‘I know oxen can walk backwards. I’ve seen it happen. Move back to the bank. Spread out, all of you. Those at the front move up to the bank and thin it all out. I want…’

  His voice trailed away as there was a deep groan, as though Gaia herself had failed to digest something. Then, in a heart-stopping moment, there was a splintering noise.

  ‘Get off the bridge,’ Carbo yelled. ‘Now!’

  Even as the drivers went into a most un-military panic, a boat broke away from the pontoon, one side of it ripped out and still attached to the bridge. The boat whirled and bounced along the current a few hundred paces and then disappeared beneath the water. The planks that had been attached to that boat suddenly shot upwards, with no anchor for them, and the wagon on the other end tipped into the interior of the boat below, oxen bellowing and thrashing in blind terror.

  Carbo was dismayed to see that many of the teamsters had simply abandoned their vehicles and were running for whichever bank was nearest.

  There was another creak and a groan and suddenly Carbo was hurtling through the air. He caught a brief glimpse of his own horse screaming and plunging into the water amid shattered timbers and pieces of boat and then his world went black.

  Carbo struggled. The water was cold and dark and pulled at him, dragging him simultaneously down to the riverbed and also south toward Ilerda. Something heavy bounced off his shoulder and sent him cartwheeling through the deep. He managed to unhook his cloak, which was not weighing him down like his armour, but was most definitely t
rouble, and the crimson wool floated away up to the surface.

  He saw dimly in the dark waters a man plunge downwards, touch the bottom and then start launching himself up toward the surface, only to have a mule and half a cart land on him, crushing him back down into the depths.

  He struggled with the clasps for his cuirass, even as he realised it was hopeless. He had moments of breath left before his lungs would override his brain and force him to suck inwards, filling them with water that burned despite the cold. He would never remove enough armour and weight to swim upwards and his strength was already starting to flag.

  His feet touched the bottom and he bent his knees and launched himself. Not upwards – his armour would never allow that. But toward the bank that he could see only because of a dead horse lying on it, its mane wafting in the current. Three bounding leaps he managed toward the bank, but his limbs were starting to feel like lead and his fingers had gone numb with the cold water as they attempted and failed to work the armour clasps. He had cut his thumb on the metal and the blood bloomed darker in the dark water. One more step.

  His lungs tried to pull in air, but he resolutely kept his mouth shut by force of will alone as his body lurched and spasmed with the effort of not breathing.

  Suddenly he was zooming through the water.

  The dark was replaced with a blinding light and his eyes could not adjust, full of water and dazzled by the glare. Driven by some automatic realisation, his mouth opened and he sucked in air again and again and again, filling his lungs like never before.

  A serious face was looking down at him, full of concern. He blinked away the water and his eyesight gradually settled. His broad stripe senior tribune crouched next to him, drenched and with his hair in disarray. The man grinned. ‘Good job you let your cloak go, sir, or we’d never have known where you were.’

  Carbo coughed and coughed and coughed again and finally, when his body stopped shaking uncontrollably, he grinned.

  ‘So that’s what tribunes are for.’

  * * *

  Atenos turned at the sound, and watched in horror as the bridge bucked and tore, folded and collapsed, sending carts and wagons, horses and oxen, men and horses into the river. The Sicoris was no Rhodanus or Tiber, but nor was it some minor stream. Between fifty and a hundred paces across at different places, it was deeper than two men and flowed fast and strong. Any man who went in there in armour was almost certainly a dead man.

  He watched as the whole thing disintegrated, broken shards of timber and pieces of board spinning off as debris downstream. His horror abated slightly as he saw the gleaming shape of Carbo hauled from the water on the far bank and nursed back to consciousness, but still the whole thing was an unmitigated disaster. Two legions and the scouts were now on this bank, along with one legion’s carts. All the cavalry remained on the far side and the Tenth’s vehicles were divided roughly evenly between the grassy slopes opposite and the river bed.

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘Recall the scouts,’ bellowed Plancus not far away, his orders relayed by the musicians. The legate hurried over to Atenos. ‘Is it worth ploughing on, in your opinion, Centurion? With only half the vehicles and no cavalry support?’

  Atenos, effectively commanding the Tenth right now, shook his head. ‘We’re trapped, sir. The other of our bridges is two miles upstream and the one at Ilerda is four miles downstream. We can’t use theirs. I would recommend we move up to our next bridge and send for instructions from Fabius.’

  Plancus nodded. ‘I… wait. What’s going on?’

  Atenos turned and peered across the river to where the legate’s gaze was locked. Two legions were on the move from their camp: the Ninth and Fourteenth. They had abandoned all kit except their fighting gear, just like the Caesarian legions they were, and were moving at double time north toward the other bridge, the cavalry keeping pace alongside them.

  ‘What are they doing?’

  Atenos shook his head. He had no idea. Then his gaze slid slowly toward the knot of officers on the rampart opposite. The commanders there, even Fabius, were gesticulating wildly toward the south, downstream.

  Plancus frowned and peered off in that direction. Over the gently rolling landscape he could just see the high bulk of Ilerda rising on the far bank, miles away.

  ‘What have they seen?’

  But Atenos was not looking. He was listening.

  ‘The enemy are coming.’

  ‘What?’ Plancus turned to him.

  ‘I can hear distant calls – infantry and cavalry. Roman instruments, but not legion calls I know. It has to be theirs. Afranius and Petreius. Somehow they know what’s happened and that we’re trapped. They’re coming for us.’

  Plancus slapped his head.

  ‘Debris. It’ll take only moments for debris to float miles downstream in this current. They’ve spotted the debris, I’ll bet.’

  Atenos huffed. ‘They have infantry, which means they can’t move any faster than us. If we make for the second bridge, we can be there before them.’

  ‘Not with wagons,’ Plancus pointed out.

  ‘Then leave the damned wagons, Legate.’

  ‘Can’t do that, Atenos. We’ve just lost a whole load to the water, and with the supply situation like it is, we need them. We can’t let the enemy get the wagons. We have to protect them.’

  ‘Then we’re buggered, sir. We’ll have to form up and face the enemy.’

  Plancus gave him a bleak, humourless grin. ‘Well we’ve been pressing for a fight. Looks like we’ll get it. We only have to hold until the Ninth and Fourteenth get here.’

  ‘Only?’ repeated Atenos meaningfully.

  ‘I’m not sacrificing the wagons, Atenos.’

  The centurion nodded. ‘Very well. We’ll need favourable ground. And we’ve got half an hour at the absolute most before they’re on us.’

  Plancus looked about. ‘There’s a good sized rise over there.’

  Atenos peered at it. Some three hundred paces from the river was a small plateau with a very regular edge. ‘Looks like a fort platform to me. Maybe some legion has camped here before?’

  ‘Either way, it’s our best chance. We get the vehicles in the middle and defend in orbis form around them. No heroics, no charges, just solid, careful defence with as little waste as possible. We hold them until the other legions get here.’

  Turning back to the river, Atenos put his hands around his mouth and bellowed across. ‘How many?’

  A tribune on the far side did the same. ‘Four legions and horse, we think.’

  ‘Shit. That puts us on equal terms even when the others get here. This could go bad for us.’

  ‘Come on, Centurion,’ Plancus grinned. ‘You’re Caesar’s glorious fighting Tenth Equestris.’

  ‘Don’t feel too glorious right now,’ grumbled Atenos. ‘Alright. Let’s get to work.’

  * * *

  Atenos gestured to the centurion to his left. ‘Spread your men out a little more forward and have the reserve come closer. When the moment comes to rotate ranks I don’t want any delay. Quick and efficient, from one line to the next, alright?’

  The centurion saluted and began to move his men a little here and there, prodding them as his optio nudged them around with his staff. The wagon drivers and their mates had followed a suggestion of the Seventh’s Primus Pilus, and were gathering any rocks they could find from among the dirt and grass and piling them in their wagons.

  ‘Looks like they’re here,’ Atenos said suddenly, pointing at one of the scouts, who was racing back toward them from the south. Other riders were also appearing at speed, waving and pointing behind them.

  ‘Damn, that was quicker than I expected,’ Plancus hissed.

  ‘Indeed,’ Atenos replied. ‘We’ll have at least half an hour to hold until our friends arrive. Hope the men’s blood is up.’

  Plancus smiled and drew his sword with a rasping hiss.

  ‘Put that bloody thing away.’

  ‘Are we not ack
nowledging rank these days, Centurion Atenos?’ Plancus said meaningfully.

  ‘My apologies. Put that bloody thing away, sir.’

  ‘Atenos, we don’t have the luxury of sparing me. Every sword counts.’

  ‘And you’ve probably been practising very hard, sir, but leave it to those of us who’ve trained all our lives for this. Besides, nothing hits a legion’s morale harder than watching their commander take a face full of gladius.’

  ‘Point taken, Centurion. Blunt point, but taken nonetheless.’

  Atenos waved the legate away and Plancus, distinctly unhappy with the decision, moved through the ranks to the centre of the raised platform where the teamsters had drawn their vehicles into a rough square like a makeshift fort. Clambering up unceremoniously onto one, he peered off into the distance in the direction of the enemy.

  Atenos flexed his shoulders, arms, fingers, stamped from foot to foot, keeping his leg muscles limber. He turned the sword hilt in his hand, finding the comfortable angle where his fingers had worn the bone of the hilt into shape. The centurions to either side had collected shields – oval ones considerably smaller than the legionaries’ great body-shields – from the carts as soon as it had become apparent that there would be fighting. Atenos had not. In his right hand, he held his gladius, and in his left the petrified, knobbly, ligneous vine stick that was his badge of office. Since he had first taken his commission under Caesar, several of his peers had tried to persuade him that the staff was a badge, and not a weapon. A hundred men under Atenos’ command would attest differently, having been on the receiving end of it, and they were only being clattered for misdemeanours. How might it be used to harm someone who really deserved it?

  The scouts did not pause, riding past the two legions drawn up on the raised ground and bellowing warnings to the officers. The enemy were right behind them. And then they were gone, north in the direction of the other bridge. Atenos watched them pass. They could do little good other than as light skirmishers anyway, and their job now was to apprise the commanders of the legions hurrying to their aid of the situation, and to exhort them to move with all haste.