FIELDS OF MARS

by S. J. A. Turney

  The northerner watched, his heart in his throat.

  Sure enough, as the moments wore on, the two fleets converged. As each pair of Massiliot ships neared one of Brutus’, they shipped their oars, their momentum carrying them into position, the vessels slowing, through natural water resistance and the skill of their crew, to come alongside. Brutus’ ships did the same, the fleets drifting toward one another and slowing, oars raised and then pulled inside. No ship who intended to live through an engagement left their oars protruding when another vessel came alongside. If there was even a chance the enemy hull might touch the oar blades it would mean the end. The oars would be smashed, and the portion of the long timber beams that remained inside the ship would be pushed back, crushing and smashing the rowers between them into agonising deaths. No. Any sailor worth his salt shipped his oars as another vessel came close to move alongside.

  And so, as though they were docking at a jetty, the Massiliot ships ran alongside the Caesarian ones, drifting expertly to a halt. The Albici archers began their barrage as soon as they judged they were in good range. In Catháin’s opinion, the trierarchs of their ships could have kept them outside oar distance if they’d desired, but in order to give the archers their best effective range, they had closed on Brutus’ vessels.

  Catháin squinted. At this distance, it was not quite so easy to make out the finer details. Was that some kind of construction on board each of Brutus’ decks? Some siege work of some sort? It looked like a great crate or even a low vinea.

  He realised what they were with surprise. They were overlapping shields, the familiar red designs hidden beneath their leather travel covers, perhaps to preserve them from the salty air, or perhaps to keep the nature of the formation hidden from the enemy as long as possible. A testudo, like the ones the army made, keeping the bulk of the men within safe from the arrow storm. Equally, as the enemy ships had pulled alongside, the oarsmen had hunched down and pulled spare covered shields over themselves. A few men would have fallen to the arrows anyway, but not half as many as the Massiliots had been expecting. Every man had adequate cover, even the rowers. And as the archers finished their first barrage, a few letting off sporadic loose shots as the majority nocked a new arrow, the Caesarian fleet responded.

  On each of the twelve outclassed ships, the testudo unfolded like a flower opening to the sun. Strong sailors hidden within hurled grapples and lines. In the blink of an eye, the whole battle changed. Where a moment ago, the Caesarian ships had been pinned beneath twin sources of arrows and had seemingly stood no chance, suddenly they were on the offensive and the attackers knew that something was going horribly wrong.

  The heavy iron grapples flew out, four from each side of each ship, and more than half of them struck home on target. Before even the Massiliot crew realised what was happening and rushed to free the pointed menaces, massively-muscled men on Brutus’ ships were hauling on the lines. Those cables that had missed were hauled back and thrown again.

  Panicky archers had dropped their bows now and were trying to dislodge the grapples, nervous fingers scrabbling at the pitted iron hooks as their owners’ eyes remained fixed warily on the soldiers aboard the Caesarian vessels. There was no hope with the grapples so well pinned. A few of the more forward thinking among the archers began to draw swords and daggers and hack and saw at the ropes, trying to free their ships, but Catháin knew how much effort that would take. A sailor knows better than any land ape that a salt and brine-strengthened rope is as hard as steel and a man can cut easier through a hull than through a proper rope.

  Catháin watched in wonder the arrow clouds thin and then fade to virtually nothing as the rest of the archers began to join the desperate attempts to free their ships. Relatively safe from arrows now, the Caesarian sailors rose, adding their own muscles to the ropes as the marines who had formed the testudo split into two groups, one facing each ship attacking them. Forty men facing a ship of roughly as many archers. But the men Brutus had fielded were not unarmoured archers, nor even the lightly armoured marines of the Roman fleets. They were true heavy legionaries, geared for war. Catháin almost laughed, but then remembered upon whose walls he stood and contained his glee behind sullen brows.

  As he watched in growing disbelief, the sheer muscle exerted on the ropes dragged the Massiliot vessels sideways through the water, a feat that would take Herculean strength. A few of the ships finally managed to get themselves free before they were inexorably dragged into Brutus’ trap. Often the only way was brutal, the sailors hacking at the strakes of their own ships, braking away the rails and timbers so that the grapples attached to them fell harmlessly into the sea even as other men used oars to push themselves away from the horrible, terrible Caesarian vessels and their cargo of armoured killers.

  Catháin made a count. Nine vessels remained trapped by Brutus’ ships a few moments later, even as the attack foundered and failed. He could hear Ahenobarbus raging and bellowing even two towers away. Arguments broke out there and a musician was summoned. A call to retreat went up, summoning the entire fleet back to the city.

  Those ships that had moved to the periphery turned swiftly, unhampered by grapples, and raced back to the safe harbour of Massilia at a surf-cutting pace. Those who had managed to free themselves from Brutus’ ships struggled back, trying to turn and get away. They had time, Catháin noted, for Brutus ignored them, concentrating on the nine ships he had pinned.

  The true brutality of Brutus’ plan then unfolded.

  Unable to break enough ropes or remove enough grapples, the Massiliot ships were drawn in with a series of deep, wooden crashes against the Caesarian vessels’ hulls, and even before they had finished jostling back and forth in the water, the boarding ramps had been run across and forty bloodthirsty, bellowing veteran legionaries crossed the boards and threw themselves into each group of archers like a hot coal into a slab of butter. Optios and Centurions moved among them as they mercilessly butchered their prey. Here and there a Caesarian or a Massiliot would tumble, screaming into the gap between hulls, where they would be mercilessly crushed as the hulls bounced, jostled and ground against one another like the Symplegades – the ‘clashing rocks’ of Argonaut legend. Catháin had watched that happen before in sea combat. It was one of the worst ways to die he could imagine.

  The entire compliment of soldiers now on board the enemy vessels, the archers fell like wheat. It was appalling to watch even at this distance. Catháin had seen fights up close, and death too. He knew what it would be like on those ships – like a hot night in Tarterus – and was immensely grateful he was on this airy tower top watching the grisly display from a distance.

  Those Caesarian ships who were not part of the fight, whose opponents had managed to cut loose and flee, made valiant attempts to chase them down, but while their sailors might be inferior, the trierarchs were clearly good men, following a plan. They chased the fleeing Massiliots only as far as the edge of the fight, then let the enemy run rather than follow them into danger.

  It was over in a hundred further heartbeats. Catháin watched, stunned, the legionaries returning from three now dead hulks even as the ruined hulls began to fill with water, dipping down into the waves, sinking with their crews of the unburied damned on board. Those lines were released, and the three vessels slowly disappeared from view, swallowed up by the briny deep.

  The other six remained afloat, though their crews fared no better. Whether it had been part of Brutus’ plan or just a side effect of angry, beleaguered soldiers, the legionaries on board had given no quarter. Not a Massiliot sailor nor archer from those nine ships lived out the morning. Catháin watched in cold understanding as the bodies were tipped into the sea and the crews of the fleet reorganised so that the captured vessels could be sailed away.

  The northerner shook his head and cast silent ‘thank you’s to half a dozen gods – some of them even Roman ones – as he watched Brutus, victorious. Thirty vessels were even now racing back in through the welcoming harbour
mouth of Massilia – the smaller and less occupied ships. The biggest and the best of the Massiliot fleet had been committed and had been lost.

  And Brutus, who had sallied forth against insane odds with twelve ships, was now turning his fleet and sailing back to his besieging harbour on the island with eighteen, including six of the best, most manoeuvrable vessels the city had boasted.

  Ahenobarbus was beside himself. His shouting was, to Catháin’s mind, most ignoble and un-Roman. Some poor bastard tried to calm the raging general down and the northerner watched the unfortunate tribune tipped over the parapet, where he plummeted to the water below. It was a death sentence. A fall, even into water, from that height would have broken every bone in his body. The tribune sank beneath the surface and disappeared.

  As the wall top and the towers became hives of activity, Catháin moved to an opening and disappeared down a stairwell, finding his way out through the defences and into the city. He kept his composure through the forum, where horrified Massiliots were wailing over their loss, and all the way to Fronto’s warehouse, where he unlocked the door and disappeared inside.

  He found one of the best vintages in a huge amphora, pulled up a chair beside it and poured himself a large unwatered wine. He drank it, then another, and then another. And only when the pleasant fug of Bacchus was beginning to drift into the periphery of his vision did he allow himself a burst sigh of relief and then a peal of slightly deranged laughter.

  Gods love that young man. He was everything Fronto had said and more.

  Brutus was a lunatic. But he was a genius with it.

  Catháin fell asleep some time later, comforted with wine and dreaming of his soggy, northern homeland.

  Chapter Eleven

  6th of Quintilis - Ilerda

  If he hadn’t lived through it, Fronto would never have believed it. Had he been back in Rome and someone had told him it had rained in Hispania in high summer for ten straight days, he’d have called them a liar. Junius and Quintilis in the region were the hottest, driest months and even a day of showers was a rare treat to savour. Ten days of almost torrential downpour was unimaginable.

  Fronto rolled over irritably in his bed and wrenched the blankets up higher, as though the problem was a chill. It wasn’t. It was the incessant drumming of rain on the tent roof, which had kept him awake for hours each night, or would have done had he not somewhat slid into his old ways. The enforced stationary situation, as both armies huddled in their camps battered by the rain, had left little to do, and Fronto’s wine consumption had reach an all-time high, or perhaps the equal of those days in Gaul before Lucilia and the strictures of age had toned it down somewhat. At least going to bed in a nice mental blanket of Chian red helped him sleep through the downpours.

  Most of the time.

  And then on some occasions, the insistence of the weather drummed through even the thickest of heads and left him tossing and turning in his bed, working through problems and failing to find solutions even as he kept trying to clear his mind and fall asleep again.

  He’d tried to solve the rain-noise issue by having spare blankets stretched above the tent to deaden the rain before it hit the leather roof. The relief lasted around a count of fifty and then the weight of the water brought the blanket slapping down onto the tent roof and the problem began again. He’d consulted the engineers and they had told him that there was nothing to do about it and perhaps he needed to pray to Jupiter Pluvius for the rain to stop as many were now doing. He’d told Galronus too, and his Remi friend had come up with the helpful suggestion ‘go and campaign somewhere else?’

  With a sigh, he kicked the blankets aside and curled into a ball, where he lay for a while, worrying about Balbus and his brilliant incriminating documents back in Massilia. He straightened and an insistent itch began just below his shoulder blade. Try as he might, he couldn’t quite reach it and the more he attempted the worse it got. With a snarl of irritation he rose from the bed and crossed to one of the tent struts, put his back against it and began to rub this way and that like a bear on a tree.

  His sigh of satisfaction turned into a howl of incandescent rage as the pole shifted slightly with the pressure and a small torrent of icy cold water tipped down the inside of the tent, soaking his hair and back.

  He leapt into the centre of the tent, dancing this way and that, trying to peel off the clingy sodden tunic and stopped in shock as he saw a figure standing in the tent door. On the cusp of an indignant demand to know what in Hades the visitor was doing, he recognised the shape as Galronus and sagged.

  ‘Our druid used to do a ritual dance a bit like that on the solstice,’ the Remi prince snorted. ‘And my cousin once did it when a wasp got trapped in his trousers. Is this something you do often when you’re alone, and does Lucilia know?’

  Fronto wound himself up to a blistering retort, but something about his friend stopped him. The ribbing was Galronus as usual, but the Remi’s expression was dour and concerned.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Broken timbers in the river. One of the guards alerted a centurion and it got back to Carbo, who sent runners to warn the officers.’

  ‘The bridge again?’

  His friend nodded. ‘We presume so. Hardly surprising given the state of the river now.’

  Fronto nodded. The river had been worrying the engineers for days and had been one of the prime reasons for so many offerings to Jupiter Pluvius recently. The first two days had seen little change, but then each successive day of continual downpour had strengthened the flow of water in the Sicoris such that now it was even beginning to threaten the camp. Surges had led water to slop over the banks and brought the dry dusty soil down so that the verges were wearing back and becoming dangerous. More than one legionary had fallen foul of the treacherous riverbank while going for a surreptitious piss and struggled to drag himself clear of the torrent. One man had gone missing two days ago and it was assumed that the river had claimed him for good on such an occasion. Even the ditch around the camp was fast becoming a moat, the water in it almost hip deep.

  But while the engineers had been very vocally worried about the river, no one had specifically mentioned the bridges until now. Fronto hadn’t given them a moment’s thought. They were not temporary pontoon bridges now, but good solid timber constructions.

  Or at least, they had been.

  He didn’t like to contemplate what the possible consequences of this might be.

  ‘Get dressed. Caesar is gathering the officers at the equisio’s enclosure.’

  Fronto nodded and hurriedly found a dry tunic, started to slip into it, paused and used it as a towel on his back and drenched head, then found another and pulled it on. He belted it and slipped on his boots, then found his most waterproof cloak and flung it about him, fastening the brooch and pulling the hood forward.

  ‘Come on, then.’

  Dressed in light kit, for this was not combat and the weather was playing havoc with the army’s iron equipment, he hurried out with his friend, airing yet more irritated language as his feet sank into the boggy mud that more or less formed the ground of the whole camp now. Squelching and slipping, accompanied by horrible sucking sounds, he staggered through the rain, which came down like solid rods, toward the horse enclosure where the chief equisio, Flavius Pinca, kept the officers’ horses separate and better cared for than the bulk of the mounts. As he found the first slight incline, Fronto felt his foot slip and caromed down the slippery slope, landing flat on his back and continuing to slide to a halt. He rose to find Galronus grinning like an idiot, and sent a couple of choice curses into the air, drawing shocked looks from the few nearby troops who had call to be out in the rain in the middle of the night.

  Caesar and Antonius were already present and mounted when they arrived, and two of the other legates were busy waiting for their horses. Fronto found cruel glee in the fact that Salvius Cursor had been omitted from the gathered personnel, which called only for staff officers and legionary and cava
lry commanders.

  ‘You look like an upright turd,’ Antonius snorted. ‘Did you bathe in mud on the way?’

  ‘Thank you. And piss off.’

  The angry retort just made Antonius laugh out loud and turn to Caesar. ‘See what I mean, Gaius? No matter how bleak things look, Fronto can always find something to amuse.’

  ‘I’ll amuse that smirk right off your face in a minute,’ grunted Fronto as he pulled the cloak tight and watched Bucephalus being led out. The magnificent black beast looked depressed and damp already. Fronto knew how he felt.

  Caesar seemed anything but amused. He turned his piercing aquiline features on Antonius.

  ‘You would laugh at a Plautus comedy, Marcus.’

  Antonius shrugged, but Fronto simply frowned. He would laugh at a Plautus comedy too. Farces, pratfalls, fart gags… what was not to like? Better than the stuffy high-brow playwrights that the nobility seemed to prefer, anyway.

  ‘I myself fail to find much to laugh about,’ Caesar added, ‘over a legate covered in mud. Our issues are serious business, Marcus. This could spell the end of our campaign in Hispania if we cannot recover the situation somehow.’

  Fronto nodded his understanding as Bucephalus was led toward him. The legions had recovered from their near starvation through Caesar’s timely rescue, his recovery of the supply routes and the steady stream of goods they brought. But that relied on the two bridges upstream.