FIELDS OF MARS

by S. J. A. Turney

  So on the morning of the tenth, Fronto had ridden out ahead of the cohort with a small complement of familiar companions: Mamurra, Salvius, Galronus and the three surviving members of his former singulares unit. Sixteen days of travel, limited by the speed of the infantry cohort accompanying them. And now, as the parched summer began to give way to the first thoughts of autumn, they had arrived.

  Swallowing his dismay at the level of destruction, Fronto waved the party on, down toward his villa.

  The walls of Massilia were still intact, though they showed numerous scars and blackened patches. The ground before them was a patchwork of burned grey and muddy, dry brown with barely a blade of grass to be seen. Huge piles of timber lay in stacks, and vast pens of animals were dotted about. Legions were camped in different places, with vexillations cut from them and positioned here and there as required. Massilia steamed gently. There was no sign of fighting, but figures were moving about on the walls.

  The besieging force had numerous pieces of artillery constructed, vineae, wicker screens and shields and the like, but there was one grand edifice that drew the eye in the centre of it all. The twin aggers that had been constructed months ago when Fronto was last here were still in evidence, but the northern one, which marched from Trebonius’ main camp to a central point on the walls, stopped some hundred paces from Massilia’s defences. And where it ended, Trebonius seemed to have built a squat tower.

  ‘What in Hades is that?’ Fronto breathed, pointing at the tower as they moved toward the villa.

  ‘Looks like Trebonius has constructed a sort of bridgehead defence,’ Mamurra replied, deep in thought.

  ‘Has to be thirty feet across and thirty feet tall. What’s it made of? Brick?’

  Mamurra nodded, and they rode on.

  ‘It all speaks heavily of inactivity and unwillingness to commit, to me,’ rumbled Salvius Cursor.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Two months. Almost three, in fact, and all they’ve done is char the defences a little. And instead of breaking the walls down, they’re building their own. Makes me wonder whether Trebonius has the mentality of the besieged as much as his enemy.’

  ‘Let’s not start casting aspersions without knowing the facts,’ snapped Fronto.

  They reached the grounds of the villa swiftly and Fronto sent the cohort from the Eleventh off under Pullo to find an appropriate site to make camp, while he and the other officers rode through the gateway and dismounted, tying their horses to the hitching rail. The grounds were filled with men going about their tasks. Each one was appropriately deferential to the new officers in their midst, but it still felt like an unwelcome invasion to Fronto as he watched men erecting a tripod of timber on a spot where he used to roll around and play with the boys.

  The guards on the door of his villa stood to either side and granted them instant entry. Half the new arrivals wore the uniforms of senior officers, and the others were clearly their guards.

  Fronto’s disappointment did not end at the door. His villa did not look like his villa any more. His furniture had all gone, his personal effects too. The mosaics were chipped and scuffed, the fountain seemingly broken, since it was dry and inactive. The wall paintings were all damaged where men had been careless in passing.

  In the atrium, he gestured to Masgava, Arcadios and Aurelius. ‘I’m perfectly safe here. You know the villa. Find part of it occupied by someone unimportant and turf them out. Set it up for us.’

  The three men nodded and walked off to secure a place in the house, while Fronto led the other officers into his tabularium, which he assumed had been commandeered as the office of the senior commander. He was not surprised to find Trebonius at the desk, surrounded by maps and documents. Two clerks sat in the corner, scratching away at wax tablets.

  ‘Gaius,’ Fronto murmured as he passed into the room.

  Trebonius looked up from his work, frowned for a moment, then broke into a weary smile. ‘Marcus. Good to see you. And Mamurra. And Galronus and Salvius too. Is the general with you?’

  ‘He still has matters to attend to in Hispania,’ Fronto replied. ‘But the main fight there, I would say, is over. Once Varro is leashed, the general will turn east again. In a few weeks, I suspect.’

  Trebonius nodded. ‘But he sent you?’

  ‘It was suggested that you might be able to use Mamurra’s talents. We escorted him with a cohort of the Eleventh. How do things lie?’

  Trebonius gestured to the chairs opposite him. There were two. Fronto and Mamurra sank into one each, while Galronus loitered near the door and Salvius remained standing, arms crossed, a disapproving look on his face.

  ‘Out,’ the siege’s commander said to his clerks, waving at the exit. ‘And shut the door.’

  Once they had gone, Salvius and Galronus took their chairs and pulled them up to the table.

  ‘We’ve been at something of an impasse,’ Trebonius sighed. ‘The walls are thick, the defenders strong, the town well-stocked and their commander defiant. And there are methods I could use to bring down Massilia in short order, but they would cause widespread destruction in the city, which the general expressly forbade, so my hands are tied somewhat. We pick at them, and they laugh at us, and it goes on day after day. If it hadn’t been for Brutus’ rather impressive successes with the fleet, I’d say we were losing here, but he is managing to make them sweat blood any time they try to leave port. Eventually, of course, the city will start to starve, but that could be next spring, and the idea of waiting out a siege over winter is far from pleasant.’

  ‘There are ways to take the place,’ Salvius Cursor said quietly.

  ‘But not without huge collateral damage for the civilians,’ Trebonius said again. ‘And that Caesar does not want.’

  ‘Tell me about your tower,’ Mamurra mused.

  ‘The problem was that we could hardly do anything close to the walls without coming into the effective range of archers, slingers and artillery. My lads couldn’t do anything without getting hurt. And whenever we managed to get shields up there – the big wicker ones – they sallied out of a gate and destroyed them, then our men died again. Problem is, with the aggers, it’s difficult to get enough men close to make an active push without just opening them up to arrows. So I had them build the fort. It’s not particularly big, but it’s enough to offer protection. Whenever I’ve made a push near the walls since then, our men can fall back into the fort for safety.’

  Mamurra nodded. ‘You’ve not thought about raising it?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Making it into a proper tower, rather than a squat wall. It could be constructed, even within arrow shot of the enemy. I have experimented with ways for doing just that. Build a wooden framework inside the brick and use it to climb and protect as the walls increase in height. Straw mattresses lodged inside against the brickwork to help absorb the impact of artillery against it. Wetted hides to prevent fire arrows damaging the interior as you work. There are other angles to take and work on, but you can build the tower from the inside within range of the enemy.’

  ‘But why would we do that?’ Trebonius frowned.

  ‘To give you the freedom to work. You say you are at the mercy of their missiles close to the walls, and this is what keeps you from success?’

  ‘I didn’t quite say that.’

  ‘It is what you intimated,’ Mamurra brushed the denial aside. ‘Then if you wish to work properly, you have to render their missiles harmless. Move vineae into place along the agger so the whole causeway is a tunnel of safety, and build up the tower. I will draw you up the plans. It will need to be five – perhaps six – storeys.’

  ‘That’s insane.’

  ‘That is required. It will bring you to an equal height with Massilia’s walls. The walls of the tower will be strengthened. Five feet of thickness should be adequate to withstand any punishment, especially with the mattresses to back them. We will leave apertures at intervals to allow bolt throwers and archers to sight the wal
ls and the area nearby. And the roof will project. Beneath the eaves there will be well-protected space enough for a whole unit of archers. Between the archers and artillery, they should be able to clear the Massilian walls of men and machines enough to work below in relative safety. You can then take whole cohorts forward to provide protection from sallies, while we work to…’

  He reached out and grasped the map before Trebonius, hauling it round so that it faced him. ‘This tower here. It is opposite your little tower. Once we have everything in place, we begin to undermine that tower to one side so that it falls safely away from our forces. Once they lose a tower and we have a breach, the day is yours, I think.’

  Trebonius blinked.

  ‘You think this is possible?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then I am grateful that Caesar sent you, Mamurra. I will have the word passed to my officers that the project of the tower is now in your hands. Do whatever you need to.’ He looked up at Fronto. ‘And your orders?’

  Fronto shrugged. ‘I presume we’re seconded to you. I’ve a cohort of the Eleventh making camp. Salvius and I command them. Galronus is my adjutant, and I have three singulares with me. Make what use of us you wish, but I would request one consideration?’

  Trebonius nodded. ‘And what is that?’

  ‘However you do it, when we get inside those walls, I want to be among the first men in.’

  A suspicious face now. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I have business interests and employees in Massilia. I know Caesar – and you – are all in favour of taking the place with the minimum of violence and destruction, but we all know that there will be at least some trouble. Legions will not besiege a town for months and then smile and drink with the defenders the day they get inside. There will be at least some killing and damage. I want to try and protect what is mine.’

  Trebonius nodded. ‘I had forgotten that you were now a man of Massilia, Marcus.’

  ‘Should be damned hard to forget,’ sighed Fronto, ‘when you’re sat in my villa planning your siege.’

  * * *

  14th of September

  Fronto fretted. Somehow, though the siege of Massilia had drawn out over three months, it had never occurred to him that things would not suddenly resolve themselves quickly now he was here with Mamurra. Somewhere beyond those scarred, heavy walls, were Catháin, many of Fronto’s worldly goods, and a few letters that might easily get his father-in-law a one way trip down the Gemonian Stairs, following his own head at some distance.

  Everything he cared about that was not in the villa near Tarraco was behind those walls. And there was no way in. He had taken to walking the length of the defences, not really in the hope of seeing anything useful, but simply because it was less irritating than sitting in a room and waiting to hear news. How the officers who’d been here for three months were managing to maintain their spirits, he had no idea. Wine, he suspected, since the supply line from here to good wine country was short and efficient.

  It had become a common enough sight now, that the soldiers no longer panicked when a small party of officers wandered among them apparently out for a stroll. Fronto and Galronus, accompanied by Masgava, Aurelius and Arcadios. On occasion, Brutus too. The young officer had come running to meet them when he heard the news that they had arrived. Though he spent all his time on the islands opposite the port, he made sure to drop by on a social visit from time to time, and the five of them had visited Brutus on his island once, too, enjoying a brief trip around the bay on a small liburnian to view the city from a side they would not otherwise see.

  Not once, no matter how often he scanned the parapet, had Fronto seen a figure that could be Catháin. Today was no exception. Fronto and Galronus, with Masgava, Arcadios and Aurelius following on closely, strode along the south agger. The raised embankment crossed the muddy dip toward the city walls close to their southern end. Beyond, Fronto knew, was the harbour. He could see the point where the walls moved down to the water’s edge at the inland end of the natural harbour and projected out into the water, terminating with a squat tower. Beyond the harbour, facing the city’s wall-less front, was an area of marshland so treacherous that no army could cross it. So secure did it make the city that the Massiliots had never bothered to wall it in. Trebonius had snorted at the notion and set two centuries of men to finding a passage across the marshland that would bring them to the shore opposite the harbour. Thirty five men had vanished without trace before the idea was abandoned. The Massiliots had been right.

  The south was therefore of little interest except to observe the city’s interior from a distance, and scouts had been set to watch from there now, beyond the marsh at considerable distance. A seaborne assault was suicide. The natives were a rich port, and knew how to protect their assets. Crossing the marsh and then the harbour was suicide in a different way, as the marshes would be filled with Roman dead before even a man got as far as the water. Which left the walls.

  It was easy to see how Trebonius had become bogged down here for months. Had he been able to use fire or otherwise endanger the place, it would have been easier, but Caesar wanted a city to occupy afterwards, and one with a grateful population. Not a charred columbarium full of corpse-ashes.

  Still, things were finally moving on, now that Mamurra was at work. It was still slow, but at least it felt as though they would get there eventually. The tower had been complete for days, and had proved once again Mamurra’s reputation to be well-earned. Artillery had been ferried from the camps to the tower under a great long roof that covered the northern agger. The weapons had been positioned carefully at high vantage points. Archers had been sent there one unit at a time in rotation.

  The enemy had reacted swiftly, Ahenobarbus had sent out a sally straight away – a strong one. Almost a cohort of men, mostly Roman legionaries, with native Massiliot support. They learned immediately that the tower contained more than arrows. A cohort of legionaries had been assigned to the tower, a quarter of them based in the thing’s lower levels and the rest under the cover of the vineae passage along the agger.

  The numbers had been evenly matched, but as the city’s defenders moved to strike at the legionaries in the tower and under the shelters they came under attack from the missiles in the tower and by the time they pulled back, desperately, to the walls and the small postern gate from which they’d issued, they left behind a landscape strewn with their dead.

  The tower then began its work in earnest. Scorpions loosed huge iron-tipped bolts through the holes in the tower, while the archers released swarm after swarm of arrows at the wall top. The missile troops loosed with wild abandon, safe in the knowledge that they were in no danger of running low on ammunition, with vast reserves back in the camp and a good supply line constantly feeding the army. All day the first day, and all day the second, the bolts and arrows had flown.

  At first the Massiliots had fought back in kind from their artillery positions or with bows from the towers and wall parapet. But it had been to no avail. The walls and towers of Massilia had their crenulations, but they were open to the air, and with the sheer quantity of missiles pouring at them they never stood a chance.

  By comparison, Trebonius’ men were safely ensconced in a covered tower, using only small apertures to loose their missiles, and the Massiliot replies rarely made their way through the armoured position. The result was a clear success. By the sunset of the second day, everyone concerned had found their maximum ranges. The defenders kept clear of the turret and the walls within reach of the siege tower. All fell eerily quiet.

  Then, a few days ago, when everyone was beginning to feel deflated at the fact that things had settled once more into a waiting and watching game, Mamurra revealed the next phase of his design. In one of the lesser, more peripheral, work camps, he had been working on something else.

  It was a vinea, or something like, but on an enormous scale. Mamurra called it the Musculus, and it would certainly require plenty of muscle to move it. Where
the vinea were usually between fifteen and twenty feet in length and half that in width, following good Vitruvian principles, this beast was more than three times that size, formed not of good adzed branches, but of tree trunks two feet thick. Where vineae roofs were formed of light timber and dampened hides, this monster had a roof of tightly-packed brick on shingles of tile and clay. Damp hides were still pinned atop to add an extra layer of protection, preventing water from being cast down to sink into the clay and weaken the brick roof. And even atop the wooden frame, then the shingles, then the clay and the bricks and then the hides, a wicker net of raw vines stretched, preventing dropped stones from tearing the hides to allow in the water to crack the clay to move the bricks so that the enemy could put fire into the structure.

  It was a monster.

  This morning, the structure had been declared complete and had been moved to the north agger. In preparation, an entire legion was detailed to remove the vinea tunnel that had rested upon it for weeks. Then, moved in the same slow, ancient fashion more commonly used to portage ships, the Musculus was rolled atop perfectly shaped logs along the agger. Each time a log rolled free at the back, twenty legionaries carried it forward and dropped it in place in front of the structure. So, with a constant cycling of logs, the Musculus slowly closed on the walls of Massilia. Finally it reached the end of the ramp and, with only a minor drop back onto the grass, rumbled forward.

  Fronto had been genuinely impressed. Not only was the new construction as hardy as the walls of a town, if not more so, but it was surprisingly portable and had been moved into position with relative ease. But the best part was Mamurra’s planning. To Fronto’s knowledge, the siege engineer had not even been to the walls of the city barring two quick runs to the tower to check on progress. And yet, the moment the Musculus was dropped into place and the logs rolled free, his perfect planning became clear. The Musculus was precisely the correct size to fit between the end of the agger and the wall of the city, butted up against the tower.