Marius' Mules VII: The Great Revolt (77 page)

‘What was that with the Arverni?’

‘Hmm?’

Fronto glared. ‘Don’t be coy with me. That wasn’t Caesar. That was your doing. The Aedui I can understand, but the Arverni? And don’t feed me this rubbish about them being led against their will. I saw the fight in them yesterday. So why?’

Antonius gave him a sly, sidelong smile.

‘Politics, Fronto. You’re a soldier, not a politician.’

‘What?’

‘The Arverni were at the heart of the rebellion. The Aedui were the linch-pin that turned a rebel army into a national force.’

‘Precisely.’

‘And we do not, under any circumstances, want this to happen again.’

Fronto was starting to get annoyed. ‘So?’

‘So how readily do you think any tribe who has supplied us with slaves is going to follow one who didn’t - an official
friend of Rome
- into a second war against us.’

Fronto stared. ‘That’s twisted!’

‘That’s politics, Fronto. That’s why you’re a career soldier and you never climbed the cursus.’

Fronto stopped, watching Antonius disappear with the other officers, swigging wine as he went. Devious. Strange, complex, cunning and devious. Did Lucilia really think he could be anything more complex than a soldier? His gaze moved to the columns of smoke rising from the funeral pyres that covered the plains like a rash. Perhaps she was right. And as long as men like Antonius were drinking wine, importing the stuff from Campania might be a nice change from a thousand scattered bodies.

Lucilia. Suddenly he found he was more desperate to be home than he could ever remember being.

* * * * *

Fronto stood close to the gate. He was expected to be with the officers up in the praetorium, of course, but he simply did not have the patience, the heart or the stomach to watch what was about to happen: the subjugation and humiliation of a king. Being present at this great occasion and being seen to be so close to Caesar, supporting him, would be a career move that would confirm a few glittering futures today. Caesar would notice Fronto wasn’t there. He would be irritated by it, despite everything else happening.

But this morning, only an hour before this historic event, Fronto had visited the general and officially resigned his commission as legate of the Tenth legion. He had unknotted the red ribbon around his cuirass and handed it over. As of now, he was not an officer in Caesar’s army, and no man could order him to stand there and watch the end of Gaul, for that was exactly what was happening.

The musicians were blowing their instruments with glorious fanfares so long and so loud that he half expected a lung to pop out of the end of a cornu, and the whole thing was beginning to give him a headache. Caesar sat back up the hill on his campaign chair which had been draped with exotic animal pelts to look a little more throne-like. The officers were gathered around him, along with the eagles and standards of ten legions. The hillside was forested with captured Gallic standards as a monument to the rebels’ failure. And every officer of the legions, from tessarius, optio and centurion up to the tribunes, stood lining the Via Principalis from the north gate to the gathering at the headquarters, all in dress uniform, gleaming and proud to watch the humiliation of Vercingetorix.

Fronto watched the beaten tribesmen passing beneath the gate’s arch, their weapons discarded, their expressions disconsolate and lost. The foremost forty or so were supposedly the chieftains and leaders of the tribes, but Fronto had watched as they passed, and he was almost certain that they were nothing more than farmers and sailors bearing the torcs and arm-rings of their masters. Were the real leaders dead? Hiding and awaiting a chance to flee? He didn’t really care.

And then there he was.

Cavarinos walked past with the rest, wearing the arm-ring of his Arvernian heritage.

Fronto stepped out and addressed the centurion at the street’s edge.

‘I’ll take that one.’

The centurion - from the Thirteenth, apparently - gave Fronto a disparaging look. ‘Slaves will be assigned at a later date. Besides, he’s Arverni, so he’s immune.’

Fronto gave a low menacing growl as he watched Cavarinos moving away up the street.

‘I need to speak to that man, now get out of my way.’ Shoving the centurion aside, he grabbed Cavarinos’ arm, dragging him out of the parade of misery and into the shadows near the gate. The centurion opened his mouth to argue, even though the offender was wearing the tunic of an officer, but half a dozen singulares veterans suddenly closed up around the man protectively and, shrugging off the incident, the centurion turned back to the road.

A moment later, Vercingetorix went past, chin high and proud, unarmed and unarmoured, yet attired as a king. He was going to meet Caesar as a defeated equal and not a subjugated enemy.

Good luck with that.

‘I will be missed.’

‘No you won’t,’ Fronto muttered.

‘There is no need to save me, Fronto. Remember, the Arverni are not to be punished.’

The bitterness in his voice was hard to miss, and Fronto shook his head. ‘It is a sad day for your people.’

‘A glorious one for yours.’

‘Only a fool would think that.’

‘Then your main street is lined with fools.’

Fronto grunted. ‘What will you do?’

Cavarinos appeared to sag slightly. ‘I must find my brother’s body. Despite everything else that happened, I betrayed my family and I will have to live with that. I must begin to make amends.’

Fronto nodded his sombre understanding. ‘He shouldn’t be too hard to find. The bulk of the dead on both sides will be mass-cremated and buried, but anyone of nobility or rank will be laid out properly. Look for the Gallic nobility and check out the markers.’ He paused. ‘But not yet. Be subtle. The wounds of this battle will take a long time to heal. A soldier seeing a Gaul creeping about among the graves of nobles might not think too hard before he sticks a spear in you.’

Cavarinos nodded. ‘I can be subtle.’

‘Of that I have no doubt. What then?’

Cavarinos shrugged and paused as they listened to the announcements from away at the praetorium, where Caesar was narrowly avoiding gloating over his captive.

‘I will return to Arverni lands for a short while. There will be much to do, and I will have family matters to tie up.’ He sighed deeply. ‘Then? Then I will go.’

‘Where?’

‘I honestly have no idea. Somewhere away from this nightmare. Somewhere away from the Gods of our tribes, where druids have no sway.’

‘You could do worse than start again in the Republic?’ hazarded Fronto.

Cavarinos gave a humourless laugh. ‘I’m sure. But I doubt that will sit well with the shades that now fill my nights. No. Somewhere far away. Once I have things settled at Nemossos, at least. Perhaps you could try and make sure that your general tempers his men in the aftermath of this?’

‘I’ve never had that kind of influence with him,’ Fronto muttered, ‘Besides, I handed in my commission this morning. I am no longer a legate. No longer a soldier, in fact. This time next week I will be back in my villa above Massilia crooning to my boys and carving them shitty, badly-shapen toys. And importing wine,’ he added with a grin. ‘Importing wine is high on my list of things to do next.’

‘Then I wish you luck and, given what I know of you, I wish Massilia even more.’

Fronto laughed.

‘You might want this,’ Cavarinos murmured, reaching to remove the thong around his neck.

‘You keep it. I fear you will need it in the coming months. And I know a nice shop in Massilia where I can get a new one. I need a new Nemesis anyway, since I broke my last one.’ He grinned. ‘Look after yourself, Cavarinos of the Arverni.’

The nobleman held out a hand, which Fronto clasped.

‘And you, Fronto of Massilia, importer of wine.’

Fronto watched the former rebel commander slip back out into the street, where he moved up to join the rear of the parade of humiliation.

It truly was over. Tomorrow morning he would take Bucephalus and a pack mule and return to Massilia with his singulares as free men in his employ. Almost all his old comrades and friends in the legions had now passed to Elysium. The army was filled with hungry young politicians and humourless soldiers, and there was little to keep him in the bloody fields of Gaul any more. Besides, barring any mopping up, the war was effectively over and unless Caesar set his sights on new conquests, the legions may well be stood down by the senate the next year. But that was a worry for other men.

A new life beckoned with Gaul finally settled, and Fronto could hardly wait to see what it had to offer.

* * * * *

The ‘plain of mud and blood’. Summer 52BC.

Atenos reached down and shouted over to Brutus.

‘Here it is.’

The senior Roman officer hurried between the markers to where the Tenth’s primus pilus stood, looking down. Fronto’s sword, with its glittering orichalcum hilt filled with gods, hung from the corner of a marker which was also hung with a thick gold torc and a serpent arm-ring.

‘You deserve a medal for that, centurion. It could have taken months to find this.’

‘Someone’s been here before us, too, sir,’ Atenos noted, pointing down at the tracks in the dirt.

‘Burial details. They’re not fussy.’

‘This wasn’t a soldier, sir. Flat-soled boots. No nails.’

Brutus frowned and looked down at the grave. ‘Something else there too, stuck in the earth. Still, I’m not about to start messing with graves, and I strongly suggest you do the same. Just grab the sword and we’ll head back.’

Atenos nodded and collected the expensive gladius from the marker. ‘This is going to need a good polish and probably a new scabbard now after all that damp and muck.’

‘I daresay that can be done. Does Fronto really put much stock in this sword?’

Atenos threw him a strangely knowing smile. ‘The legate’s deluding himself, sir. He can no more live as a civilian than I can breathe water like a fish. We are what we are, and Fronto’s a soldier, sir. Might take him a year or two to realise it, but I’ve not seen the last of him. And I can guarantee you that even in the wine importing business, he’s going to need this.’

The centurion grinned as he hefted the glorious sword. Brutus gave him a smile in return.

‘Massilia can be a tricky place, so I hear.’

Epilogue

Fronto ran, the icy sweat pouring from his hairline and into his eyes, blinding him even further in this billowing charnel-stench of a thick mist. The gnarled yew trees that loomed through the fleecy blanket as he fled through white hell looked more and more like grasping, wizened, desiccated hands with each passing moment.

And that was what they
were
. He could see the fingers and the dirt-filled nails from their ascent to the surface of the turf, many fingers missing where the battlefield scavengers had sawed through muscle and bone to collect rings.

A forest of grasping dead hands - dark, grisly shapes in the mist.

Panic gripped him. Were these his own victims? All the fathers, brothers, sons - and, yes, even womenfolk - he had sent to the otherworld in seven years of butchering his way across Gaul? His feet suddenly ploughed into empty space, the ground falling away beneath him, unseen in the whiteness.

And he was plummeting, rolling and bouncing down a hill that was covered in jagged stones and roots. But they snapped with brittle noises as he tumbled over them, confirming that what appeared to be gnarled roots were protruding bones, the stones a shoulder, a pelvis, a skull.

Finally, the hill of dead things gave way to a carpet of damp turf, churned with muddy boot prints. The fog was now above him, like a white rug a foot or more over his head, roiling and blanking out the sky. But no longer hiding the bodies. The dead jutted like a petrified forest from the grass, mostly buried still to their hips, their hands raised to protect sightless dead faces from unseen blows. Arms stretched in supplication to gods that had abandoned them as the Roman war machine stole their futures.

Fronto felt fear like he’d never experienced. His bladder gave a little, providing the only warmth in this dead, desiccated white-grey world.

He tried not to look at the lifeless, destroyed faces of the hardened bodies as he passed them, aware that something was still chasing him. He’d not been able to see his pursuer beyond being a vague nebulous dark shape in the thick mist and yet, now that he was beneath that endless white blanket and would finally be able to get a good look at what hunted him, he still could not bring himself to turn and face it.

A body he passed was suddenly familiar, and his heart skipped a beat. Was that twisted wreck’s features really little
Marcus
? His son’s infant face smeared across the cracked skull of a dead Gaul. And Lucius? Was Lucius here too? A victim of his endless career of murder?

His foot caught something and he tumbled again, rolling across the cold, wet grass. When he finally stopped, shuddering, weak and terrified, his leg was submerged. He seemed to have rolled into the edge of a river or a pond. Panic-driven, he turned to rise.

And there was that raw, crimson face with the burning eyes, snarling as it bore down on him with a skinning knife.

Fronto woke with a lurch that almost stopped his heart. The sheets were wet through and freezing cold, rucked up from his night-time thrashing. His eyes failed to accept that the face had gone, echoing that image even superimposed over the dim, darkened wall of their bedroom. He was shaking uncontrollably as his ears finally returned to life.

‘
Marcus
?’ the voice was panicked. Insistent.

He turned and took long moments to recognise Lucilia, her face a mask of utter concern. Shivering, he shook his head at her with slight movement only and crawled from the edge of the bed, walking shakily across to the twin beds, with their high sides and voluminous covers, which rested by the wall.

Marcus and Lucius dozed happily, the latter turning with a contented murmur. They had changed so much since the last winter. They were babies no longer, but boys with the clear attributes of the Falerii. They were clearly his sons.