Marius' Mules IV: Conspiracy of Eagles (59 page)

“If it’s important, Fronto, then it’s important. Tell me.”

“The murders.”

“Yes?”

“All of them. Pinarius, Tetricus, Pleuratus, and an attempt on me. I have reasonable suspicions as to the culprits now.”

Caesar rolled his shoulders, his cloak falling back down behind him. Several more spots of rain fell.

“I believe that your suspicions were centred on two centurions from the Seventh?”

“You’re apparently well informed, Caesar. And yes, for a time, I was sure Furius and Fabius were behind them. But I am now more or less convinced that they’re innocent of the attacks.”

“Really?” The general tapped his lip, an upward curl of humour twisting one side of his mouth in a manner that really annoyed Fronto.

“Yes. I haven’t the proof yet, but I suspect the tribunes Menenius and Hortius of the Fourteenth.”

Caesar burst into a short, explosive laugh. “I think you must have been eating the strange fungi from the forest. Neither of those men could effectively swat a fly.”

“Nevertheless, it was them. I’m fairly sure.”

“And their motive?”

“Removing your supporters: your courier, your nephew, me and Tetricus – two of your more loyal officers. And Tetricus threatened the pair of them once in a briefing, so there’s an additional motive.”

“Menenius is a client of mine, who owes me a great deal. He is hardly likely to be troubling me. He would be ‘bitinthe hand that feeds him’ so to speak. And Hortius? Hortius is in a similar situation. He’s expecting a position as an aedile next year, which he can only get with my support. No, Marcus; the two would have too much to lose by kicking my legs out from under me. You should look elsewhere for your pro-Pompeian traitors.”

The legate continued to stare ahead, though his eyes flicked to Caesar again and he just caught another flash of that look. There was definitely something going on here that Caesar knew about and was keeping to himself.

“What on earth is that commotion?”

Fronto glanced across at Caesar’s exclamation and then followed his gaze to see that a number of the men of the Tenth had downed tools and were running towards a cart that was hurtling out from the woodland path to the west.

“Looks like a grain cart. One of
Cicero
’s I wonder?” the general mused.

“Looks like trouble, more like.”

Without waiting for further information, Fronto turned around and spotted the nearest centurion.

“Have your cornicen call the duty cohorts to order. Get ‘em lined up before the ramparts. We’re about to need them.”

As the centurion ran off, shouting for his musician and standard bearer, Fronto turned back to the approaching cart. It was now bouncing across the short, well-trodden grass beyond the multitude of stumps, only a hundred yards from the camp. Already a number of Caesar’s praetorian cavalry officers had fallen in behind him from where they had been lurking at a respectful distance.

The general stepped down the slope, with Fronto at his shoulder and passed through the gate towards the cart, which slewed to a halt some thirty feet from the rampart. Two men slid down from it. The driver looked harried and panicked, while the man who’d been clinging to the top of the load was clutching a wound in his side and staggered as his feet hit the ground.

“It would appear that you were correct, Fronto. Trouble it is.”

“Sir!” The legionary driver, wearing just his tunic, unarmed and unarmoured apart from the gladius at his waist, came to a sudden halt and saluted, his wounded mate attempting the same a few yards back, but failing as he slumped to the ground.

“Report, man.”

“Natives, sir. Thousands of ‘em. They came out of the trees…”

“Where?” Fronto said, holding his gaze.

“About three miles west. It’s on main paths. I can take you.”

“Are the men still… it wasn’t a massacre?”

“No sir. When we left they was in a circle, holdin’ ‘em back. But they won’t last long, sir. They’re umbered.”

Fronto glanced across at Caesar, who nodded.

“Then get ready for a run. You can take me and two cohorts back there, fast as we can.”

The man saluted wearily and the legate turned to his general.

“Can you-?” Fronto began, but Caesar was already ‘shoo’ing him. “Go, Marcus. I’ll bring the other cohorts as soon as we can get them armed up.” He turned to one of his cavalrymen. “Have this wounded soldier taken to a medic, and put out the call for the first, the second and the seventh to tenth cohorts to down tools, retrieve their kit and form up. The third and fourth can remain to garrison the camp under Brutus and Volusenus.”

Turning, the general was about to offer a word of encouragement to Fronto, but the Tenth’s legate was already moving across the grass bellowing commands to the assembling men, pausing only to collect an unattended shield from the ground where its owner had left it and would rue his action later when his centurion found him unequipped.

The general watched him go and shook his head. While an ambush of the foraging troops was never a good thing, at least it had finally brought the opposition out into the open and provided a timely interruption from Fronto’s probing and uncomfortable questions.

* * * * *

Fronto blinked away tears of pain and willed the gap in the trees that opened out into the clearing and signalled the end of their journey nearer. He was, he knew, still fitter than most men his age, and many of the soldiers – carrying much the same load and a great deal younger – were struggling at least as much as he. The rushing of the blood pounding in his ears and the hot rasp of the heaving breaths racing in and out of his lungs were not the main issue though, for all their discomfort. Three times in three miles he had been forced to drop out of the run and rub his knee, turning his leg and re-tying the supportive wrap he’d used on the advice of Florus the capsarius. Each time he’d had to put in that much extra effort to regain his place in the force that charged to the relief of the Seventh.

He tried to guess how many wounds he’d taken in one form or another throughout his life of service, but could only take a stab at two-to-three dozen. And of everything that had happened, it seemed only fitting of Fortuna’s strange sense of humour that the one thing that could trouble him in battle was the result of an unfortunate and purely random twisted knee. Florus had told him that if he rested it properly for a few weeks it would strengthen, which had simply led to an argument in semantics over the meaning of the word ‘rest’.

The sounds of desperate fighting issuing from the clearing were welcome, for all the horror they indicated. At least they stated clearly that the Seventh were still there and hadn’t been wiped out.

Panting with the effort, the legate pushed out to the front, putting on an extra turn of speed, the energy for which he seemed to pull in out of the very desperatio in the air. A moment later, he was running alongside Carbo, who had proved time and again that his strength and fitness really did belie his less than svelte shape. The centurion was more pink faced than usual, but ran with a steady, enduring gait, the breaths coming out measured and rhythmically.

The forest path was clearly used by local farmers with their carts and oxen, wide enough to admit a wagon with plenty of room to spare on either side. It was enough to permit a column of legionaries eight-men wide without the danger of entanglements, and the two cohorts of the Tenth ran in perfect formation, in the manner drilled into them over the years by first Priscus and then Carbo.

Ahead, the path opened into the huge clearing and though Fronto could see little for certain, he had the impression of wide, golden fields of grain trampled by screaming men. His view was somewhat impeded by the chariots and the cavalry. It appeared – at least from this angle – as though the Britons had blocked the exits from the clearing with their cavalry and empty chariots while the bulk of their force, on foot, including the chiefs and nobles from the vehicles, had charged the Roman circle, trying to batter them into submission.

“Chariots” Fronto barked out between heaving breaths.

“We’ll take them down first” Carbo acknowledged, apparently – and irritatingly – not even short of breath.

“And… cavalry.”

“We’ll try, but they’ll be too fast and manoeuvrable for us, I fear. So long as we can cut a path through to the main force we’ll be fine.”

“Surprise?”

“Unlikely. Even over the noise, these hairies at the back will hear us coming. The Tenth are a fearsome force, but we’re hardly subtle.”

Fronto smiled at the wide grin on the centurion’s ruddy face. He knew for a fact that Carbo actively encouraged the making of noise and the use of war cries in the Tenth to put the fear of Hades into whoever they faced. As often as not it worked.

“I just wish we had time to deploy and surround them. We could wipe them out” Carbo sighed.

“Carbo… there are several… thousand of them. There’s less… than a thousand of us!
Surround
them?”

“You know what I mean, sir. I hate to think of them escaping again.”

Another couple of spots of rain pattered off the rim of Fronto’s helmet, reminding him that yet another rainstorm was imminent, the clouds darkening by the minute. Reaching up, he fondled the bow-legged fishwife amulet at his neck and hoped it wasn’t insulting to Fortuna, praying that the full extent of the rain held off for another hour or so. A battle in the pouring rain was high up on Fronto’s list of hateful things. Letting go of the figurine, he dropped his hand to his side and drew his gladius, steadying his grip on the heavy shield he’d borrowed.

A strange, guttural cry went up ahead and the few Briton horsemen they could see at the clearing’s entrance wheeled their mounts. The cohorts had been seen and suddenly all hell broke loose among the enemy.

“Ready, lads!” Carbo bellowed. “First five centuries punch straight through and make for the back of the infantry. Next four split off to either side and take care of the cavalry and chariots. Centurions mark your position and prepare your signals.”

Back along the running column, the officers identified their century’s number and prepared to either push forwards or file off to the side. Beyond the first nine, the other centurions would appraise the situation as they reached the clearing and deploy as required.

The horsemen were now wheeling away from them again, riding off into the clearing, bellowing warnings. Clearly Carbo was right: the cavalry could easily remain out of reach unless they chose to commit – an unlikely option. The chariots were even now turning to move away from the arriving legionaries, trundling along the forest’s edge, their athletic drivers leaping about on the traces and yoke and manoeuvring the horses.

Fronto had heard enough Celtic shouting in the past four years to begin to separate the meanings by tone alone. The shouts now going up all across the clearing were not the ordered calls of warning or redeployment, but the panicked calls of men wrong-footed and in fear of their lives. Clearly they had not expected reinforcements. The legate grinned – fear was almost as powerful a weapon as the gladius.

“Give ‘em a shout, Carbo.”

The centurion nodded. “For
Rome
!” he bellowed. Behind him, the cry was echoed at the top of almost a thousand voices, protracted so that it was still ringing out when he shouted “For Caesar!” beginning a second cry that was instantly taken up. By the time of the third cry – a standard call for the legion – the men were pre-empting him. “For the Tenth!”

The shouts, as intended, devolved quickly to a general din and tumult of bellowing, shouting legionaries, the noise of which was enough to almost drown out the sounds of fighting in the clearing.

One of the chariots had been unlucky enough that, as it turned, a wheel had caught on something among the stubble, and the vehicle had almost overturned. The driver was manoeuvring desperately, trying to free the wheel, when he and his chariot were completely engulfed in a river of crimson and steel.

Despite being in prime position at the front of the cohort, Fronto forewent the opportunity to negotiate the vehicle and attack the driver, recognising the very real chance that his knee would give and he would plunge embarrassingly to the ground beneath the chariot. Instead, he contented himself with a quick glance at the Briton’s unpleasant demise as one of the legionaries swarming round the vehicle lifted his shield and drove the bronze edging into the man’s chest without even stopping. As the soldier ran on, heedless, the chariot driver disappeared with a squeal below the running feet of the cohort, where he failed even to bring a weapon to bear before he was trampled to death by hundreds of hobnailed boots, smashing his face and chest and snapplimbs.