by Peter Tonkin
‘All on horseback?’
‘Hence the supply carts – we’re not carrying all our own equipment like Marius’ mules. We need to move faster even than a quick march.’
‘And slaves?’
‘Four of the most reliable. I don’t know their names yet but Quintus picked them from among Antony’s legions. He says they’re steady, reliable, good in a tight spot and keen to earn their freedom. Two per cart. They can all cook and can apparently erect a tent pretty fast – though we’ll be sleeping rough of course. Under the stars if it stays dry. Under the carts if it rains.’
Within the hour as the sun was just beginning to show itself amongst the peaks of the high Alps, the little force was riding or rolling out of the Porta Principalis. Across the bridge over the moat onto the wide green field that lay between the river-bank and the foothills. The members of Artemidorus’ contubernium who were staying behind all crowded into the gateway silently watching the crypteia of variously dressed riders and the carts they surrounded as they pulled away into the distance. The tribune Enobarbus stood behind the silent men and woman, tall enough to see over their heads. He too was silent, his usually open face folded into a frown.
There was a stirring behind him, and suddenly Antony was towering at his shoulder. Putting into words the thoughts of the entire group. ‘Think they’ll make it? There and back?’
‘I doubt if all of them will, General.’
‘Well, if they don’t, it’s my responsibility, remember. Mine, Tribune. Not yours. After all, that’s what generals do, isn’t it?
‘Send soldiers out to die.’
II
GRETOREX
Mid July
i
Artemidorus felt that they made excellent progress during the first two days, helped by the warmth of the sun tempered by those cool, increasingly fragrant mountain breezes. With Gretorex in front guiding them and Quintus behind chivvying the laggards along impatiently, they had no trouble crossing the grasslands of the foothills. They kept legionary hours, rising before dawn to a prandium of bread and water. Travelling all day and eating on the move. Setting up a strong defensive camp each night – just as legionaries were trained to do under the procedures introduced by Caesar’s uncle Marius. In their makeshift castra, the wagons were used as walls to corral the horses –which were securely if loosely tethered or hobbled nevertheless. A simple trench and rampart dug round the site – under Quintus’ eagle eye. Latrines. Campfires for cooking cena and the cena itself – largely dried fish, beans and lentils - taken from the supplies in the wagons. Boiled in water from the clear and icy rivulets which kept the grass so lush.
By the end of the third day, however, the incline up which they were travelling had increased as the Alps themselves towered close ahead. Moreover, they had left the broad grassland behind and were well into the pine forests that clothed the mountain slopes. Where even Antony had found it impossible to set up proper castra.
That was where the trouble started.
‘I don’t like forests,’ said Quintus. ‘Too little light, too many trees, too much undergrowth. Pine needles over which you could march an army in silence. Not that you’d need to, of course, not with all these bloody birds singing their heads off. Security goes out of the window with the sight-lines. Pilae, bows and arrows – even slings - become next to useless. Any Gaul worth his salt can come and go through the forest like a Germanian ghost warrior. And, of course, just when you need to set up a really secure castrum, to protect yourself from the nothi bastards you have tree-trunks, tree roots, shrubs and bushes all militating against you. The time will come, you mark my words, when whole legions will go into a pine forest somewhere and never come out again.’
‘At least this looks to be a well used trackway,’ said Artemidorus, his uncertain tone at odds with his positive words.
‘A double edged sword, answered Quintus, nodding. ‘Travellers can move faster. But latrunculi highwaymen know better where to find them.’
‘Calm down old man,’ said Epatus, youngest and most insolent of Gretorex’ cavalry escort, who was riding just behind them. ‘If it’s a popular track, there’ll probably be a taberna further up.’
‘There is,’ called Gretorex from up ahead, his voice carrying easily in the hush of the windless woodland rendered quieter by a stultifying afternoon which proved too hot even for the birds. ‘We’ll be there by sunset.’
But all they found as the darkness rose up the mountainside like a flood of shadows behind them was a burned-out ruin. The wreck of the inn, with its fallen walls and black-burned wooden skeleton occupied the centre of a clearing that was already surrendering to nature. A stream gurgled merrily close at hand, its insistent chuckle at odds with the devastation. The silence of the afternoon surrendering now to the songs of the birds and the hum of insects as they stirred in the cool of the evening. They sat on their horses and wagon seats, surveying the devastation gloomily. ‘This happened some time ago,’ observed Quintus at last. ‘There no smell of burning.’
‘On the other hand,’ said Puella, ‘there’s a stream and a clearing large enough to make a decent campsite. We might even be able to get some kind of trench and rampart dug as there are no big trees nearby. Plenty of wood for a fire though.’ She gestured heartlessly at the black ribs that had once been the taberna’s timbers.’
‘We’ll need to clear some of this undergrowth first,’ grumbled Quintus. ‘Watch your feet in case there’s an overgrown balneum bath.’
‘It’s new growth,’ observed Mercury, keen to stay in Puella’s good books. ‘Should be easy enough.’
‘And the dry branches will make good kindling,’ added Ferrata. ‘In case the taberna’s timbers are too big to catch at once.’
So they pulled the wagons off the track, dismounted, tethered the horses and set to work clearing the undergrowth.
It was Quintus who found the first skeleton.
***
‘This poor bastard died hard,’ he said, looking down at the crushed ribs and shattered skull. ‘Trying to protect his family maybe. Watch out, the rest of you, looks like he might not be the only pile of bones nearby.’
‘How do you know it’s a man?’ asked Epatus.
‘By what’s left of his trousers,’ answered Quintus.
‘This’ll be his wife or daughter, then,’ said Puella, her matter-of-fact tone beginning to waver. ‘Judging from the length of the hair and the rags on her shoulders and arms. No skirt, though and her legs...’
‘Looks like the man wasn’t the only one to die hard,’ observed Artemidorus as he looked down at the wide-spread skeletal limbs which spoke to him of rape as well as murder. ‘We’ll need to move them gently and treat them reverently. Pray to the gods over them before we set up camp.’
‘I’ve found another one,’ called Notus. ‘Some kind of a nanus dwarf. And here’s another...’
‘Dwarfs!’ spat Furius. ‘They’re kids, you stultus idiot.’
‘I’d like to get my hands on whoever did this,’ growled Puella.
‘Careful what you wish for, girl,’ Quintus warned. ‘Once we light a fire, they’ll come sniffing around as likely as not. Looking for more easy meat.’
‘This happened months ago at the very least,’ said Artemidorus, bracingly. ‘They’ll be miles away by now.’ But as he spoke, his narrowed eyes were already raking the shadows between the nearby trees.
ii
It took longer than planned to clear an area large enough for the castrum, to dig the rudimentary defence works, place the dead family in a clearing by the riverside and pray that they were safely all together in the Elysian Fields. At least the presence of the stream near the camp meant that they didn’t have to dig latrines. So at last the work was done. The wagons in place, the horses fed and watered, the cooking fire lit. While the meal of fish, lentils and beans was being prepared, they used the portable whetstone carried on one of the wagons to burnish the edges of the various blades they carried. Then, as well-p
repared for trouble as possible, they ate.
‘I could get bored with this stercus muck pretty quickly,’ said Puella, her spoon hesitating between her bowl and her lips. ‘Third night in a row and it’s not tasting any better to me.’
‘Not smelling any better either,’ agreed Mercury. ‘Not that there’s much you guys on cooking duty can do about it.’
‘Maybe we should have gone fishing for some fresh fish,’ suggested Epatus. ‘Bound to be some in the river.’
‘Like there was time or opportunity!’ spat Quintus. ‘You lot are all soft! Whining about a perfectly good dried fish pulmentum stew! You should have tried following General Cassius in the retreat through the deserts of Mesopotamia from that slaughterhouse at Carrhae while the Parthians were playing football with Gaius Crassus’ head and seven legions were left to rot in the sand! Or come over the mountains with General Antony last month. Then you’d be glad of any meal that wasn’t mostly made of tree-bark and horse-piss!’
‘We can send out hunting parties in the morning,’ said Gretorex, his calm tones relaxing the mounting tension. ‘Maybe have roast venison or mountain goat tomorrow night. We’ll need someone riding point anyway. And a rearguard, come to that. In case Septem’s been overconfident about how far away the men who did this have moved.’
‘Unless we find out tonight,’ grumbled Quintus. ‘The hard way.’
‘We’ll keep the fire high. There’s plenty of wood. And set careful guard,’ said Artemidorus. ‘We’d need to do that anyway. I haven’t heard any growling or howling but there could well be wolves or bears around.’
‘Maybe not wolves,’ said Furius. ‘If there were wolves, the bones would have been scattered because the corpses would have been scavenged. Especially the kids. Tender and tasty.’
‘That finishes me,’ said Puella. ‘This fish stew was close to turning my stomach without that happy thought.’
***
Artemidorus sprang awake at the first touch of Quintus’ hand on his shoulder. Too experienced to jump up and start looking around for danger, he simply slitted his eyes and scanned the shadows between the tree-trunks beyond the firelight. The sky was clear; the midsummer moon full and high. Everything visible within the forest was coloured silver-gilt set against immeasurable obsidian.
A flicker of movement in the fathomless darkness between the trees.
He reached for his sword, careful to keep his movements to a minimum. Epatus and Notus were on guard but neither of them appeared to have noticed anything yet. Artemidorus suspected they had made the basic mistake of looking into the fire as they kept the flames high and bright. So that anything in the shadows was effectively invisible to their dazzled eyes. They were the least experienced, as was evidenced by the fact that they had taken off their helmets and loosened their armour. Which was probably why Quintus had been keeping an eye on them.
Gretorex was snoring loudly. The river was babbling merrily. The birds were asleep but a wind had sprung up, sighing through the upper branches, making them rattle against each-other like dry bones. And whoever was out there was walking on a carpet of pine-needles. Effectively silent as well as almost invisible. For the moment at least.
Artemidorus stirred Gretorex with his foot. The cavalry legate, another old soldier, returned the pressure and reached for his sword – still snoring lustily. And passed on the silent message, nudging Furius with his foot in turn. Who kicked Ferrata gently in the ribs. It was a routine that they had planned, for the little castrum was nowhere near as secure as they would have liked. Within half a dozen heartbeats, they would all be waking up. And reaching for the weapons they kept close at hand.
‘They’ll go for the horses,’ breathed Quintus.
‘Try and stampede them over the top of us,’ whispered Artemidorus. ‘Come in close behind them, swords and axes at the ready.’
Quintus grunted. ‘Meantime we have to try and get Epatus and Notus out of the firelight without giving too much away. They’ll be taken out first...’
But even as the old soldier spoke, there came the tell-tale whispering whirr of arrows in flight. Epatus dropped where he sat, shot squarely through the forehead. Notus jerked and screamed, an arrow right through the upper arm. His shout of surprise and pain lost amid the howling of the Gallic robbers’ attack.
iii
Artemidorus, Quintus and Gretorex leaped to their feet and ran towards the horses, shoulder to shoulder. The horses were tethered firmly between the solid carts, as they had been each night so far. Even so, the sudden sound of the attack spooked them. They reared in panic, screaming, their eyes rolling. Pulling at their tethers with dangerous power. The shadows behind them attained form – half a dozen robbers smeared with black mud from the riverbank. Howling and waving a range of swords and axes, clearly planning to cut the panicking animals free, then slap their rumps with the flats of their blades. To stampede them through the apparently sleeping camp, as Artemidorus had said.
But the Gauls had not reckoned on Quintus. At the old soldier’s insistence, the solid, reliable, battle-hardened slaves who drove the wagons were sleeping beneath them. And, as with everyone else under his command, Artemidorus insisted that they lay down wearing their chain mail and fish-scale armour, with their swords within easy reach. The first two Gauls, running silently ahead of their shrieking companions, daggers ready to cut the horses free, were each met by a gladius in the hands of a well-trained military slave. They were dead within heartbeats, their bellies slit, cold steel through their ribs and hearts - fatally reliant as they were on camouflage and surprise rather than armour. The drivers turned at once and began to calm the frightened horses.
By the time the wave of howling robbers arrived, Artemidorus, Quintus and Gretorex were in among the horses themselves, ready to meet their almost-naked opponents. They had all faced Germanian Ghost Warriors or Gaulish Bear Soldiers with Caesar in Gaul. They knew to treat the madly howling men with respect; confronting them as though they too were wearing full armour. Aware that, while their semi-naked state added to their vulnerability it also added greatly to their speed – of hands, feet and reflex.
Their presence surprised the Gauls, compounding the slight advantage that their armour gave them. Artemidorus’ duel with Puella remained clearly in his memory. Once again, he had no shield in his left hand, for they were with the gold, disguises and other weaponry under the wagons’ flatbeds. The opponent he abruptly found himself facing had a long sword in one hand and an axe in the other. Both revealed when their burnished metal glinted in the fire light. There was no alternative but to attack and so the spy took two steps forward coming right out from between the rumps of the restless horses to meet his foe chest-to chest. He gave the sword slightly less attention for it was an unwieldy weapon. It’s blade even longer than a spada but also designed for slashing downwards from the height of a horse’s back. Not for hand-to-hand like this. Those parts of him most likely to be the sword’s targets were covered by his armoured vestis. It was the axe, which, like Puella’s spada might come against his head, which needed urgent consideration. It would have been deadly even had he been wearing a helmet. Which he was not.
But the simple, almost Pythagorean geometry of conflict came to his aid. His opponent was wielding his long sword in his right hand - on Artemidorus’ left as they faced each-other, therefore. While the axe was in his left – on the centurion’s right. He accepted the sword-strike against his ribs, folding his left arm down to trap the blade against the chain mail which had turned the blow. While his gladius rose to counter the in-swinging axe. The short sword was designed to stab through belly and ribs. But it went through forearms just as easily. The blade passed between the two bones which joined the wrist to the elbow. Artemidorus jerked upward with all his might, mentally thanking Achilleus that he had spent time with the whetstone earlier. The newly sharpened edge sliced the forearm, wrist and hand in two. The Gaul, stunned and crippled, staggered back screaming as his axe span out of his bifurcated fist. B
ut was not quick-thinking enough to release his grip on the sword. So he stayed within easy reach of Artemidorus’ gladius which tore free of the ruined limb to plunge into the pit of the attacker’s throat. The lightning-swift manoeuvre, stabbing in and jerking out, was hardly complete before Artemidorus was turning to help Gretorex who was fighting one against two.
As Artemidorus did so, he raised his left arm fractionally and caught the dead Gaul’s long sword as it dropped. A moment later, armed precisely as Puella had been when she knocked him down, he was repeating her technique a little less elegantly against his new adversary. But this time the sword-blade was real and here was no protective headgear. When the in-swinging sword wedged itself in the Gaul’s skull, he simply let it go. The dead man and the sword which killed him fell away together.
***
It was only then that Artemidorus had a moment of leisure to turn and look across the rest of the camp. Realising that the wave of Gaulish robbers which he and his two immediate companions had faced were only one part of the attack. As Quintus, Gretorex and he had been seeing off the squad tasked with stampeding the horses, the main attack had come from the river side – their movements covered by the chuckling stream as well as by the wind and the blattering roar of the fire. But it looked as though the rest of his lethal crypteia, named for the Spartan death-squads, had at least managed to meet the attack, even though Epatus and Notus were out of the reckoning. Hercules was at the head of a handy-looking wedge formation, backed by Ferrata, Furius and Mercury, then the rest of Gretorex’ cavalrymen. The only member of his command he could not see immediately was Puella.
Then the time for worrying was over. Another wave of attackers erupted out of the shadows howling like rabid wolves and the sword-work started all over again.
It took almost until moon-set to break the attack and send the defeated Gaulish robbers scurrying back into the shadows empty-handed. As the last of the attackers vanished, Artemidorus turned, gasping and exhausted. Began gathering his weary command closer round the fire to lick their wounds and count the cost. Which, at first, seemed relatively light. In the bright circle of the still-blazing flames, they were able to see what their steadfast defence had cost in more detail and start cataloguing and binding their wounds. The horses were restless but still all in place. The wagons remained untouched. Epatus was dead. Notus was crippled for the time being but once Quintus had snapped the head off the arrow and pulled it back out of the code-maker’s arm, the damage seemed less dangerous than it had first appeared. The bone was untouched. None of the major blood vessels had been severed, judging from the meagre bloodflow as Quintus applied a tight bandage.