FIELDS OF MARS

by S. J. A. Turney

  ‘What is it?’ Galronus asked.

  ‘There are two locks. I only put one in.’

  ‘Catháin has been busy, then.’

  ‘Good man, he knows what a besieged city is like. Saving what he can and protecting everything from looters and opportunists.’ Fronto gave the door an experimental push. ‘Barred from the inside, too. Come on. Let’s try the back way.’

  Dipping into a side alley, Fronto led his friends to the rear of the warehouse and closed on the smaller, single door. ‘Two locks again,’ Galronus pointed.

  ‘This one’s always had two locks, and I have the keys.’ A moment later, he snicked each lock open and, lifting the latch, gave the door a shove. It opened inwards with a noise like a tomb cover grating aside, and stuck slightly on the gritty floor. Inside, all was dark. Fronto glanced questioningly at his companions and Galronus nodded, drawing his sword, an action followed by the Masgava and Aurelius. Arcadios unslung his bow from his shoulder and fished an arrow from his quiver.

  He stepped inside.

  The same preternatural sense that had saved him a dozen times on the battlefield visited him again now. As the hairs rose on the back of his neck, Fronto suddenly ducked. The stout ash club hummed through the space above him, parting his hair before thudding into the door edge with a deep, ligneous thump. Had the blow landed, Fronto would probably now have been searching the floor for his brains. He continued with his ducking motion and turned it into a roll, somersaulting forward and coming up into a combat-ready stance, sword grating out of its sheath.

  The door suddenly burst wide open as Galronus and Aurelius hit it simultaneously, and light flooded into the darkness.

  Catháin stood illuminated, blinking with one eye, club still in hand and still overextended. Fronto stared in shock. The strange northerner was disfigured. His mouth was swollen and lumpy. His left eye was a bulbous purple mass with a closed slit at the centre, and his nose was at a jaunty angle and surprisingly flat. A clump of hair was missing above one ear, with just raw flesh in its place. His left arm was tightly bound to his chest with a makeshift sling, the club in his right.

  ‘What in Hades’ own latrine happened?’ Fronto whispered.

  Catháin shook slightly and made an odd purring noise. It took Fronto a moment to realise the man was laughing.

  ‘Murff ee mugga lou.’

  ‘What?’ Galronus asked.

  ‘He said “you should see the other fellow”,’ Fronto snorted, rolling his eyes. ‘Who did this to you?’

  ‘Armans.’ Catháin paused, breathed slowly through his wrecked nose. He dropped his club and crossed to a small stool, picking up a cup of wine and taking a careful sip through his cracked lips. He hissed at the pain.

  ‘Hurts,’ he said slowly. ‘Talking. Hurts.’

  ‘Keep it to a minimum,’ Fronto said. ‘Romans did this?’

  Catháin nodded. ‘I… was sneaking onto walls. Signalling your navy. Caught me.’

  ‘You’re the one who’s been signalling Brutus?’ Fronto stared. ‘You mad sod. That’s about as dangerous a job you could ever choose. Ahenobarbus is not a forgiving man.’

  ‘I know. They were… going to crucify me. But I got away.’ He paused, wincing again and took another painful sip. ‘Tribune hurt my face… broke my arm. Arsehole didn’t bother with my legs, though. More fool him. I know how to run.’

  He grinned and then whimpered as the motion brought fresh blood through the splits.

  Fronto frowned, a suspicion creeping over him. ‘A tribune? A tribune did this?’

  A nod.

  ‘Looks like a corpse? Sneers a lot?’

  ‘Sounds like the one.’

  ‘I am going to tear that bastard’s spine out through his nose,’ snarled Fronto. He suddenly remembered the reason they were both here. ‘Balbus. Balbus sent you to find some papers for him…’

  ‘Burned,’ Catháin sighed. ‘Days ago. Couldn’t get them out of the city. Once I’d been caught and escaped I knew the Romans would be looking for me. Couldn’t let them find the papers, so I burned them all. Balbus’ papers. Yours. All the business. Everything. Sorry.’ He stopped and rested his sore mouth, wincing at the pain of continued conversation.

  ‘Don’t be sorry,’ Fronto said, through a wave of relief. ‘The business is probably done with now, anyway. We’ll start it up again in Tarraco, but I think our time in Massilia’s ended.’

  Catháin nodded his emphatic agreement.

  ‘What do you know about Ahenobarbus? Do you know where he is?’

  Catháin sighed painfully, took another swig of wine, and braced himself for more soreness. ‘Probably gone.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He’s had three ships in dock readied for more than a week now. The fastest ones in Massilia. He’s known it’s over for a while – that the boule would ignore his demands and seek peace. He’s probably already gone. I went to warn Brutus about it, and that’s when they caught me.'

  Fronto realised he was trembling slightly. ‘I saw Ahenobarbus on the walls this morning, arguing. If he’s gone, he’s only just left. Will you be alright?’

  Catháin nodded painfully. ‘Plenty of wine. Dulls pain.’

  ‘Help yourself,’ Fronto urged. ‘And keep the door locked.’

  Moments later, he was out of the warehouse again into the bitter wind of the grey afternoon and hurrying down the street followed by the others. ‘The docks?’ Masgava asked.

  ‘The docks.’

  This time, they were running. Salvius Cursor would be nearing the agora by now with a century of men. The port was close to the agora. If Ahenobarbus was fleeing Massilia, running back to Pompey, then he might still be there. They could still catch him. Feet pounding on dry, dusty cobbles they ran, slipping here and there with the inherent difficulty of hobnails on smooth stone.

  Shops and bars hauntingly familiar to them whizzed past, and Fronto jinked around a couple of corners before his eyes locked on the tall masts he could see rising above the roofs against the grey, boiling sky. Breath coming in heaved gasps, the five men burst from a narrow side street out onto the port, peering off along the dock as the wind whipped makeshift covers from piles of goods.

  They were too late.

  The jetties of Massilia were more than half empty, and those ships that remained tied up were poor excuses for vessels, hastily patched and barely-seaworthy. The three good ships were busy pulling out of the harbour even now. The battering storm winds were troubling them a little, forcing them to carefully control the sails, but even as Fronto came to a stop, his chest rising and falling at speed, he could see the small flotilla already moving out through the arms of the harbour, past the ruined tower by the swamp and across the water.

  Ahenobarbus had fled.

  Impotent frustration tore through Fronto, and he could see similar in the eyes of his companions. All this, and the bastard had got away. Oh, they had secured Massilia but, just as he had at Corfinium, Ahenobarbus had escaped, whole and at liberty to seek his master, which he almost certainly would now do.

  ‘Will Brutus be able to catch him?’ Galronus asked quietly.

  ‘Doubtful. These winds are coming from inland. They favour Ahenobarbus, but not Brutus. And Catháin said these were the fastest ships in Massilia. They’re pretty swift. No, he knows exactly what he’s doing. He’ll be off and bound for Pompey and the east now.’

  But even as he watched, something was happening. The lead ship had cleared the harbour and was making for open sea, but the second of the three had drifted oddly. There was a tiny, distant noise. They could hardly hear it over the general hum of the city, but it was a sound with which Fronto was thoroughly familiar. His eyes rose to the tower above the port entrance. The great bolt thrower atop it loosed again, the missile dropping and thudding into that second ship with the accuracy of a master artillerist who knew his weapon. Even as Fronto marvelled, tiny orange lights flared on the tower’s parapet and then arced down at the ship.

  Fire arrows.


  There was no way Salvius had made it to that tower already. And his men wouldn’t even know how to nock an arrow. That had to be the city garrison and the Albici. There would, he realised, be no love lost now between them and Ahenobarbus. The Roman had led them to naught but defeat and then fled in the face of the city’s fall. Their best chance of good terms with Caesar was to hand over Ahenobarbus – the man now trying to leave the harbour.

  That second ship was in trouble now, its sail on fire and men rushing around to put out various other small flames. The third ship was turning. Whether because of the threat from the tower, or perhaps the threat posed by the burning ship in the harbour entrance, the third trireme turned as sharply as it could, quite masterfully really, and began to plough its way through the water back toward the jetties.

  ‘Pray that’s Ahenobarbus,’ Fronto shouted as he ran once more, moving to intercept the ship as it ploughed on toward the dock. The others pounded along behind him and, as the crowds dispersed rapidly in the face of potential fresh troubles, Fronto spotted legionaries jogging toward them. For a moment, he panicked that somehow the enemy had managed to outflank them, but he swiftly realised it was Pullo and Salvius with the men of the Eleventh.

  The three groups were converging on the same jetty: Fronto and his friends, Salvius and his legionaries, the trireme and its fugitives. Beyond it, Fronto could see that the second trireme had now managed to put out the fires on its deck and had cut away the sail, turning and following its mate back toward the jetties. Two of the three ships had turned back.

  Fronto quickly patted the figurines hanging around his neck – Fortuna and Nemesis, luck and vengeance. Perhaps both were at work right now.

  ‘Three cohorts of legionaries at the agora,’ Salvius Cursor shouted as they closed. ‘All surrendering, but no sign of their commanders.’

  Fronto nodded. ‘One ship made it out. The others are coming back.’

  ‘Centurion,’ Salvius turned to the Pullo, ‘take half the man and secure that intact trireme. The rest are with us.’

  The centurion called off the names of five tent party leaders and forty men followed him along the jetty to the ship that was closing on it, while the rest followed Salvius Cursor in the wake of Fronto toward the next clear jetty. The ship that was limping back toward this one was scorched and missing its sail now, but was still largely intact and of good quality. Fronto cast up a quick prayer to Fortuna. A full trireme’s crew would number around two hundred, and if they all turned out to be legionaries, confronting them belligerently might be the last mistake he and his small force made. But belligerent they were going to have to be. There was a one in three chance that the ship carried Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, and the man was ‘required’ by Caesar.

  With three cohorts surrendering in the agora, there wouldn’t be much more than a cohort left of legionaries. Four hundred or so men at most, split between three ships. They had to be using non-legionary crew for the oars. Still, if they were defiant and truly loyal to Ahenobarbus, Fronto and his forty five companions could be facing almost four-to-one odds.

  ‘Follow my lead,’ Fronto told the men on the jetty as they watched the fire-blackened trireme close on the jetty. Sailors threw looped ropes from the ship to the posts on the jetty, expertly lassoing them and hauling on them to pull the trireme up against the timbers. The ship came to a halt with a thud that shook the jetty and had every man on it staggering to retain his footing. No boarding ramp was run down from the rail that towered above head height.

  The first pregnant drops of rain blatted against the wood by the Romans’ feet. As Fronto looked up at the deep grey, leaden clouds, there was a staccato battering of rain on the wood. A sudden flash of white amid the clouds starkly illuminated the ships, and a boom tore the sky apart.

  The storm had begun.

  ‘We seek terms with the forces of the proconsul,’ called a refined voice from the ship.

  ‘The same terms will be offered to the cohorts as to the native garrison, provided their officers are willing to submit themselves to our prior judgement,’ Fronto answered carefully.

  ‘That is highly irregular,’ announced the voice.

  ‘That is my offer,’ Fronto replied calmly, flatly, with finality.

  A figure approached the edge of the ship and rose into view. He wore a sky blue tunic with dark purple edging, marking him as a man of rank. His cloak was of good quality wool, dyed dark blue. The trierarch of the ship, Fronto assumed.

  ‘I will submit myself and the crew of the Laocoon to your mercies,’ the man said in that same, clear voice. ‘My passengers, I fear, will be reticent.’

  Even as he spoke, the boarding ramp was run out and a number of burly, sun-bronzed men with numerous tattoos began to descend. Back across the ship several voices were raised in anger at the surrendering sailors. They were labelled cowards, women and deserters. Fronto gestured to his men, and the legionaries shuffled aside to make way for the sailors.

  ‘You,’ Fronto pointed at his optio – the ranking officer within this century. ‘Take ten men and escort these sailors and their trierarch to the agora to join the rest of the surrendering forces.’

  He watched as more than a hundred men disembarked and shuffled along the jetty to the port. Assuming the galley were fully crewed there would still be nearing a hundred Pompeians on board. Another quick plea to Fortuna, and he took a deep breath and marched to the boarding ramp, the others following on behind. Thirty six men, he had. Two to one odds at best, perhaps even three to one. And a fight now seemed inevitable, else the rest would have disembarked at the same time as the trierarch.

  The ramp was already slippery with the rain and Fronto ascended carefully, rain blatting his armour in large heavy drops. He emerged onto the deck and cast his gaze about. The rest of the occupants – yes, seventy or so – were gathered near the steering oars at the stern, and along the twin decks at the sides toward the aft end. Even decked for war, the space for a fight was tight.

  ‘Depart my ship and I will not have you skinned and used to patch the sail,’ a voice called.

  All thoughts of leniency evaporated at the sound of that voice. A voice Fronto had heard making insolent demands as his allies burned the Musculus. A voice whose owner had burned down a tower full of legionaries during a truce. A voice that had sneered as it beat the lifeblood out of Catháin. No quarter. Fronto found himself troubled as the rain continued to dong from his helmet and splat onto his clothes. Caesar needed to maintain his reputation and maintained the need for clemency with Massilia and its defenders. And though he had wanted Ahenobarbus brought to him, Fronto was fairly certain he would not harm the man. In the absence of the commander, who had probably fled on that first ship, Caesar would want the second in command delivered to him, and not just his head. But Fronto had vowed every night since the tower burned that he would end the man responsible. He cleared his throat.

  ‘Any legionary, centurion, optio or sailor here who disembarks and makes his way to the agora will receive the same terms as the surrendering garrison. Your commander, however? No terms for you, Tribune.’

  Legionaries parted at the rear of the ship and the tribune came into view at the end of the gap between decks. He did not look perturbed. Two huge guards stood beside him. His skeletal features regarded Fronto in the same manner that a car regards a mouse.

  ‘I remember you.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Last chance, Caesar’s lapdog. Leave my ship or you will regret your decision.’

  Fronto’s confidence wavered for just a moment as more than seventy swords were drawn with a collective rasping hiss, but it returned with an answering scrape of iron on bronze behind him. As though the gods acknowledged the importance of what happened here, the storm chose that moment to break fully, the clouds opening and dropping swathes of water on them, which came down like watery pila, bouncing on the deck to knee height.

  Fronto peered through the downpour. This could be ended with the tribune�
�s death – he was sure of that. Their reason to resist would melt away. The enemy were gathered largely on the twin decks at the ship’s sides and the small poop deck to the stern. His eyes dropped to the narrow sunken walkway between the two decks, some ten feet below and only five or six wide. It was the walkway along which water was delivered to the oarsmen beneath the decks, and where the aulete played his pipes. It led almost directly to the tribune at the rear, where the stairs rose to meet the stern deck. And it was empty. Of course it wouldn’t be for long, and it would be incredibly dangerous to run along, open to pila and swords from above at either side.

  ‘Two squads,’ he barked over his shoulder. ‘One on each deck. Remember you’re the fighting Eleventh, heroes of the Nervii, Avaricum, Alesia and Ilerda. Make your blows count. There are two or three for each of you, so don’t get greedy.’

  Dark chuckles rippled behind him as the forty men split into two units, half of them heading over to the mast and using the bridge there to cross to the other deck. Two sets of hardened legionaries eyed one another.

  ‘The pit?’ Masgava rumbled under his breath.

  ‘Yes. The tribune’s the goal.’

  ‘Last chance, legate,’ called the Pompeian officer from the rear deck.

  ‘Charge,’ Fronto shouted as another dazzling flash of silver tore through the clouds and a deep boom rolled across Massilia. The water was hissing all around the ship now as the rain ripped into it. Shouts and the clang of iron on iron were just audible from the other vessel two jetties over, where clearly things were going just as well.

  Chaos broke out. The legionaries in Fronto’s party ran, brandishing weapons. The legate kept his hand up, holding his companions back. Let the chaos settle in first…

  The two forces met on both decks with a noise like gods at war. Clangs and thuds and shouts and screams. The rain battering the wood of the ship with a constant drumming and the hiss of the water created a symphony that threatened to drown out all else. Fronto could barely see the tribune now through the torrents of falling water, the deep gloom of the storm and the shadows of the two melees aboard the side decks.