Marius Mules III: Gallia Invicta (Marius' Mules) (24 page)

There was a moment of grumbling and muttered complaints as the bulky shield was passed with difficulty along the passage. Eventually an unseen hand passed it to Fronto and he took the item and looked down at it. A circle of red wood and leather perhaps two and a half feet across, emblazoned with the golden bull. Hardly what he really wanted, but apparently the best thing on offer. Fronto turned to Capito.

“As soon as I start to run, get along behind me. Stay close. If I fall, take the shield and keep running. We need to get to that gate and secure it, so that we can get to their ships.”

Capito nodded nervously and Fronto grinned.

“Don’t worry. Fortuna’s a personal friend.”

Without waiting further, the legate took a deep breath, raised the shield, and turned the corner, breaking immediately into a run. He felt the bronze strip at the edge of the shield grating along the rock sides of the tunnel as he ran, but was more concerned about the possibility that, though much of his bulk hunched over behind the shield, a well placed shot could still put an arrow through his thigh.

And yet there was no stretch and no twang. He ran on, but began to falter. Something was wrong. Why were they not at least
trying
to shoot at him?

Smoke.

His nostril hair curled and he came to a halt, Capito bumping into him again, and risked lowering the shield for a moment.

It had struck him as odd when he first looked down here that there should be undergrowth by the gate in a sea cave. Undergrowth, no…but carefully prepared and dried faggots and bundles of perfectly combustible foliage stacked against the gate? Now
that
made sense. Fresh flames leapt up among the sticks as he watched, and the entrance to the tunnel began to fill with dense smoke.

The silence from further up the tunnel erupted into panicked movement as half a century of men turned as fast as they could and began to scramble back up the passageway toward the stronghold above.

The tunnel acted, just as the Veneti had obviously planned, just like the draw hole in the roof of a hut, funnelling the smoke into the passageway and drawing it up toward the boulder entrance on the cliff top.

Fronto coughed as the first cloud of grey, roiling smoke wafted past him.

As fast as they could, they ran back to the corner with its lamp. Already Hosidius had moved his men up to the next bend.

Ignoring the jagged rock walls tearing at their arms as they ran, Fronto and Capito charged up the slope, the passageway thickening every second with heavy black fumes.

Another corner; and another. And suddenly they were at the back of a column of legionaries desperately clambering through the opening and out into the air.

Fronto coughed raspingly and next to him Capito burst into a fit of choking. Around them the drawn fumes filled the passage, blackening everything and blocking out the light. Everything went dark as men coughed and struggled.

And suddenly an arm grasped his wrist. Fronto squinted into the smoke to see a centurion’s chest harness, adorned with phalera and other decorations. The back of the hand around his arm was criss-crossed with scars.

“Come on, sir. Out of there.”

Fronto sighed with relief as Balventius hauled him out of the entrance and all but threw him back on to the grass before reaching in to retrieve Capito.

Fronto fell back with immeasurable relief, relishing for a moment the heavy rain battering his skin and washing the black dust from his face. He wiped his forehead and eyes and sat up. A huge column of smoke issued from the tunnel entrance, pushing up into the sky like a signal. His euphoria at the sudden breathable air and dull light waned once more as he descended into a racking cough that was matched by a crack of thunder from above.

As the fit subsided, he became aware than another figure had crouched next to him. He squinted up into the rain to see the shiny face of Carbo, his primus pilus, frowning down at him.

“They’re leaving, sir. They’re just flitting across the rock shelf as though they’re on wheels. Our fleet can’t pursue them, ‘cause they just can’t get close enough. We can watch where they go, but we can’t follow.”

Fronto growled.

“These people are
really
starting to piss me off, Carbo.”

Chapter 8

(Iunius: temporary camp on the Armorican coast)

Fronto pushed the tent flap open and made his way out into the dusk, shivering against the cold. Grumbling to himself, he traipsed through the wet grass and across the hilltop to the thicker undergrowth near the cliff’s edge. The interim camp prefect, whose name Fronto had now learned was Draco, had planned their camp so well that the nearest latrines for the officers of the Tenth was more than halfway across the length of the fortress. Consequently, those officers had taken to going near the cliff edge for their business, at least when there were no high winds.

Fronto found the spot nice and easily. A helpful centurion had spelled out ‘Draco’ with small stones for the officers to piss on; a nice touch in Fronto’s opinion. Hoisting the front of his breeches down, he began to relieve himself with a sigh, grateful for a rare dry evening, even if everything underfoot was still wet through.

His eyes strayed from the rocky name near his feet, across the thick grass and to the bay below, passing across the white-flecked waves and to the next headland, which had, until this afternoon, been one of the most powerful of the Veneti strongholds. He sighed again.

For a month now the legions had been marching up and down the coast, even inland a way to chase yet more shadows that dissipated as soon as the Roman army got close. A whole month of besieging fortresses and chasing elusive bands of warriors and what did the army have to show for their efforts? Nothing. Not a single captive.

Every time the army came close to trapping the Veneti, the Gauls found new and ever more inventive ways to slip out from under their enemy and make it to safety once again. Five more fortresses had fallen in the few weeks after that smoky tunnel had demonstrated to him just how prepared the enemy were. Five more fortresses, and still not a single solid victory.

The moment that had brought him close to breaking point had been when they realised that the Veneti that had fled from the latest conquest had doubled back on them and made their way down to one of the strongholds the legions had already taken once. It was like… it was like trying to nail the sea to a tree; like trying to catch fog in a net. One thing Fronto knew for certain was that Caesar was close to the end of his tether and, when they finally caught the Veneti, Fronto wouldn’t have been among their number for all the gold and wine in the world. The last time Caesar had had this much trouble, near Numantia in Spain, the general had repaid the locals with genocide.

His gaze rested for a long moment on the shattered remains of the headland stronghold, it’s buildings pulled down, walls dropped into the sea, the thicker areas of vegetation fired and still showing from this distance as columns of smoke, and the grass salted to ruin it for generations to come… if there were to
be
any future generations, that was.

Fronto sighed again and pulled up the front of his breeches, fastening the drawstring. Before he turned away, he made sure to spit once on Draco’s name, a habit rapidly becoming a tradition in the Tenth. Glancing quickly at the sky, which threatened heavy rain again through the night, he strode back across to Tetricus’ tent. The warm glow and murmur of good-natured conversation from within welcomed him.

“I mean…” he paused, rubbing his eyes, ”the simple fact is that our ships can’t go out to sea to follow them in those choppy conditions and they can’t get close enough to land to follow them along the coast. All we can do is keep watch. Even when we do get near them, they’re both faster and higher than us.”

“I have to admit I am heartily sick of Armorica. For a few days when I got to Vindunum I was actually glad to get out of Rome and back into the field. For the life of me I cannot fathom why!”

“You could be with Labienus suffering the worst of both worlds. He has the climate of Gaul and the boredom of no action. He’s just digging aqueducts and teaching the locals the value of Rome while his boots fill with rain.”

“Remember the last couple of years? Those times we sat in that nice little tavern in Bibracte?” He grinned meaningfully at Balbus. “Or that charming little place in Vesontio where you broke my nose? I can’t remember there being rain. All I remember when I think back is warm sunshine, bees and the smell of wildflowers.”

Carbo snorted.

“That’s because you went to Spain for the winter. You should have seen the conditions at Vesontio in November. It was like camping in the bottom of a latrine.”

Fronto shrugged with a laugh.

“Fair enough. It’s just this constant rain is beginning to wear my patience away, particularly when combined with our inability to nail the Veneti down. It just feels like we’re wasting our time out here while the Gods piss on us for fun. The only time it stops raining is when the bloody thunder clouds need time to gather to give us yet another storm.”

Brutus nodded.

“But that can’t go on forever. At least if the weather clears up the fleet might have more of a chance to prove itself. We’ve been sat pretty much port-bound for the last fortnight.”

Balbus smiled and leaned forward.

“We need a plan. We need to trap the Veneti and their fleet in the same place with no means of escape. If we can do that, we can force a conclusion to all this.”

He reached up and thumped himself a couple of times gently on the chest before wincing and sliding his unfinished cup of wine back onto the low table.

Fronto leaned back with his wine and let the ensuing good-natured argument wash over him like a warm bath, soaking him in comfort. Grimacing for a moment, he shifted his supporting weight to his right arm. His left had made an almost full recovery after the spear wound last year, but prolonged pressure still made it ache painfully.

Funny how many things had changed in just over two years. When they were chasing the Helvetii, the people in this tent would have been so different, with Priscus, Velius, Longinus and others. No Carbo or Brutus in those days, though. The seasons changed and, along with them, so did the people around him, but the central fact never changed: these were the core of people that made Caesar’s army what it was.

He smiled sadly at the recollection of friends gone and currently absent and realised, with surprise, that events had taken such a turn that he’d never had the opportunity to review the situation of promotions within the Tenth’s centurionate. Clearly Carbo had settled into the role of primus pilus comfortably and Fronto was hardly about to put
that
under review. The permanently happy-looking Carbo had a strange and yet infectious sense of humour and a wicked mind for practical jokes, as Fronto was starting to discover after the third night in a row of waking with a start next to a frog that sat staring silently at him.

But the need for a training officer had slipped his mind, perhaps due to the pain that thoughts of Velius still brought. He frowned and noticed that Carbo was watching him intently across the tent, past the laughing and arguing officers.