Sons of Taranis (3 page)

‘See what I mean? Caesar’s preparing for his consulship. He’ll have the position and the money, and he’s always had the plebs behind him, especially when he wins something big. But if he goes home to the adoration of the Roman people claiming to have brought them Gaul as a province, he can’t afford to have rebellion flare up in his wake. Then even the plebs might turn against him.’

‘So what do you plan to do?’

Varus shrugged. ‘I plan to eat my cold pork, drink some sour wine, then go and brush down my horse, and make sure my slave’s got my saddle polished and all my kit in good order. I’m going to need it soon enough, I reckon.’

Brutus nodded wearily and watched his friend chew on a piece of poor quality meat before turning back to the slave column. At a conservative estimate of thirty denarii, even for these poor quality specimens, the column just leaving camp represented perhaps thirty or forty thousand denarii. If Caesar’s factor in Rome was worth his salt, the net gain could even go up to hundred thousand denarii. And this was the meagrest of the slave columns so far.

By the gods, Caesar really
was
feathering his nest…

CAVARINOS, nobleman of the Arverni, former chieftain and general in the great war against Rome, perked up at the familiar voice and rose from his chair, taking the mug of frothing ale with him to the window, where he peered out.

The central square of Uxellodunon was suddenly thriving after an hour of near-emptiness. Perhaps two dozen nobles from a number of different tribes were striding resolutely across the packed earth towards the large inn where Cavarinos had lodged this past week. He could see men of the Cadurci, his own Arverni and the Ruteni, whose lands bordered these to the south. There were others too. He couldn’t precisely identify them, but would have been willing to bet they were Carnutes, Bituriges and Aedui. Their warriors trooped along in an unruly bunch behind them all, eyeing each other as suspiciously as they would had the men next to them been wearing a toga. But even the sight of a gathering of nobles from different tribes was not what made Cavarinos shake his head sadly. That was the sight of Lucterius of the Cadurci – avid anti-Roman, habitual rebel and former close friend of the great king Vercingetorix – leading them all, with great purpose in his step.

That boded badly for all concerned.

Cavarinos stepped back slightly as the group approached. Since the disaster – the wake-up call? – of Alesia, the Arvernian noble had moved around almost continuously, only pausing for a few weeks here and there. The simple fact was that he knew not what to do with himself. He was no longer truly Arverni. He had continued shaving off his moustaches in an effort to remove himself from his brother and the past, and had cast his serpent arm-ring into a wide river on his travels. The Arverni were not what they had been, and they would never be proud again. And if he stopped thinking in tribal terms, and started to think like a Roman, which sooner or later all the people would have to do, then he was not really a ‘Gaul’ any more either. Because what the Romans called ‘Gauls’ had ceased to exist as a people after Alesia. Now they were slaves or Roman provincials who just didn’t yet recognise the fact. Consequently, there was no home for him in this land, whether inside his tribe’s territory or without.

Yet the idea of leaving somehow seemed impossible. Even if he could endure the wrench of breaking those bonds with his ancestral lands, where would he go? To the northern island, where the tribes were all cousins of the Belgae, hard and bloodthirsty, and the land was inhospitable and swampy? Across the river to the lands of the Cherusci or the Suebi, who the Romans called Germani, where life was cheap and death a daily occurrence? To the tribes south of the mountains, in that parched, brown land of bronze and blood, where a war with Rome had been ongoing for more than a century now? To Rome itself, the enemy who had vanquished his people?

And so he had wandered, and he had observed, and he had learned. And most of what he had observed was a dying culture that knew it was about to be eclipsed and eradicated. And most of what he had learned was that he no longer really cared.

The vast majority of people he had seen had been hopeless and dead-eyed, trying to eke out an existence in the impoverished, war-ravaged fields that they were too weak and too few to make work for them. And here and there he had come across small pockets of anger, where a noble who claimed to have been on that hill at Alesia – and they were invariably lying – stirred up trouble among the disenchanted, dispossessed warriors who were truly too few to make any difference now. Even had Vercingetorix remained free and spoken to the masses, there was no longer any hope of success.

The former king had disappeared after the surrender of the oppidum last autumn. Some said he had been quietly murdered in the aftermath, though Cavarinos doubted that. Not only did it not seem to be the Roman way, but also the Arverni king would be too valuable as a symbol to merely kill without pomp and show. But what had happened to him was still a mystery as far as the people of his former army knew.

The familiar voice of Lucterius was closing on the door now, and Cavarinos retreated to the corner of the room and slumped into his seat with his beer. There was nowhere to hide from the gathering of nobles, and he couldn’t really see any reason to hide anyway. He was no more their enemy than he was their friend.

The door clicked open and the four other occupants looked up in passing interest before going back to their drinks and food. Lucterius was finely arrayed, though not in armour. His sword, however, remained at his side, as did those of the other nobles accompanying him.

‘It is all a matter of time and location,’ Lucterius was saying to his cronies. ‘If only we could trust Commius and bring him in to our plans, he could prove extremely useful, but after his flight and cowardice at Alesia, we simply cannot rely on him.’

‘What use is Commius anyway?’ snorted one of the nobles in an accent that was either Carnute or Senone. ‘He has ever been but a lap-dog of Caesar. One summer of riding in Vercingetorix’s shadow does not make him a hero.’

Lucterius nodded his agreement. ‘He is weak and untrustworthy. But he has influence and power. While he languishes up among the Belgae, it is said he already begins to put together an army to lead against Rome’s ally, the Remi.’

‘There are not enough Belgae left to fight in a tavern brawl let alone a war!’

Nor are there enough of you
, thought Cavarinos silently.

‘But,’ Lucterius countered, ‘Commius, as I said, has influence. There is talk that he will cross the narrow sea and bring his cousins from the northern isles to war against Rome. And his people are related to several of the tribes across the eastern river.’

And you think our lands would still be ours if an alliance of the Britannics and the Germanics pushed Rome from it? You fools
.

‘Then perhaps we should approach him anyway?’ an Arvenian noble hazarded.

‘No. But perhaps we can use him. Our friends among the Carnutes and the Bituriges will bash their shields and light their fires to draw the Roman gaze, but we cannot afford to lose those lands.’ He turned to the outspoken Carnute noble. ‘As soon as the Romans are engaged in trying to quench your flames, we need to draw his attention to Commius. Between the two regions the Romans will be kept busy, and we will have time to build our army in the south.’

Cavarinos flashed a glance to the Carnute and Biturige leaders in the crowd and was not surprised to see misgivings written on their features. It sounded an awful lot like Lucterius was sacrificing them to give himself time to raise a force unnoticed. The idiot. As if he could find the manpower to fight off two or three legions, let alone ten!

‘Be reassured, my friends,’ Lucterius continued, apparently also reading the nervousness of his sacrificial animals. ‘We will not lose you. Make much noise. Rebel and shout, but when the Romans come, run to the swamps and the forests and keep your people safe. The time will come when we need them.’

They did not look altogether reassured, but the men at least nodded their acceptance and understanding. Cavarinos took another swig of his beer, shaking his head at the idiocy of it all. The man was so arrogant in his self-belief that he didn’t even hold such plotting in private, but spoke of rebellion aloud in an inn. Of course, Uxellodunon was Lucterius’ home town and he was lord here, but only a foolish lord believed his domain impregnable and secure from spies. Cavarinos would not be at all surprised if one of the shady fellows in this bar ran off to tell the Romans in hope of a reward. For a moment, he considered it himself. His personal war was over and, while he still felt the base pride of his tribe somewhere down in the pit of his stomach, he now recognised that the good of his people lay in capitulation and peace. Further struggle would only end in worse conditions and more dead. The only hope for the tribes now was to embrace their fate and make it work for them. Become more Roman than the Romans and thereby keep both their pride and their control.

But despite that, he would not run to the Romans and tell them.
Someone
should, but it would not be him. Not now, anyway. The time was coming to leave Uxellodunon and Cadurci territory. He would travel back east for now, to his own Arverni lands. He had not been there since the autumn, directly after Alesia. Perhaps things had improved there over the winter. Probably not, he decided.

His attention was drawn again by the word ‘prisoner’, and he looked up at the gathering of nobles.

‘If they are of no use, why do you not simply dispose of them?’

Lucterius frowned at the speaker – an unknown man with a western accent. ‘Only a fool disposes of an asset, even if it is seemingly of no current use. They have already been tortured for anything they know. There are less than thirty of them and they are starving and broken. They are no threat and require very little guarding or maintenance, so we will keep them until we have won or lost. When Esus rises once more we will ride high on a mound of Roman bodies, my friends.’

Cavarinos closed his eyes and took another pull of his drink. Did Lucterius really think he could be an ‘Esus’ raising the tribes to war once more? He could only ever be a pale imitation of the great Vercingetorix. And his army would be but an echo of that which had held the ground at Alesia.

The issue of prisoners was interesting though. They could not have been taken at Alesia, for the Romans controlled the field at the end of that fight. And while there was every possibility that they had been taken from some supply depot or roving patrol in recent months, Cavarinos doubted it. If Lucterius was trying to hide his army-building from the Romans, taking prisoners would be stupid and dangerous, and would almost certainly attract unwanted attention. And the Romans had not fought down into Cadurci lands in recent campaigns. But Gergovia was a mere two days to the northeast, and the Cadurci under Lucterius had played a large part in that victory. Cavarinos would be willing to put money on the prisoners being survivors of Gergovia.

Paying no heed to the inn’s other occupants, Lucterius approached the bar and collected a drink, leaving the others to deal with their own refreshments as he launched off into a tirade over Roman cowardice compared to the cowardice of treacherous tribesmen who should know better.

Cavarinos quickly became aware that although the nobles had paid no attention to who might be overhearing their plotting, the warriors in their retinue as they entered were beginning to look around the interior and focus on the occupants. Cavarinos was clean-shaven – a state so rare as to be noteworthy – and clearly not Cadurci, and trouble could very well be looming on the horizon. These warriors were the best their tribes still had to offer, and any one of them would be a tough proposition in a fight. Standing, he picked up his bag, nodded his thanks to the innkeeper, and made his way as nonchalantly as possible to the door. There he waited for the warriors to enter, and once the entire bunch were inside, packing the sizeable interior, he slipped past them and out into the chilly late afternoon air. Time to move on. Sooner or later someone would mention his presence to Lucterius, and it was faintly possible that this new self-professed ‘Esus’ would remember the Arverni noble who had shaved off his moustaches before the final capitulation at Alesia.

The oppidum of Uxellodunon sat rigid and unlovely in the winter cold, with rime coating every surface and the muddy furrows hardened to the consistency of iron, threatening twisted ankles and falls at every turn. As high and powerfully defensive as a smaller Alesia or Gergovia, Uxellodunon was far less advanced within, its organisation owing little to the influence of foreign design, and more resembling the settlements of the tribes centuries ago. Houses were mostly of mud-daub and timber-frame, built upon a bed of two or three stone courses. Farmland covered much of the interior and animals roved the plateau arbitrarily, mixing with the few people about on such an unforgiving day. Grass and mud. No paved streets here.

The beauty of such a basic layout was that anything unusual stood out, and Cavarinos was quite surprised he hadn’t spotted the stockade when he’d first arrived, let alone during the days he had wandered around the oppidum. Down towards the south-western gate, which stood at a sharp point in the defences on a spur of rock, a timber ring had been installed in recent months, the tips of the posts still sharp and pale.

Wandering across the rutted track, Cavarinos untied the reins of his horse from the hitching post and threw his bag across its back, then began to walk the beast down towards the southwest gate. It was not a natural way to leave the oppidum when heading east, but it would serve two purposes. Firstly, he could have a glance at the prisoners on the way, and secondly, if Lucterius realised he had overheard the conversation and decided that that was a bad thing, a false trail might be of some help.

Slowly, apparently unconcerned, he descended the slope, sticking to the rutted frozen mud and making for that gate. Before he reached it, however, he pulled his scarf up over his nose – a mode not uncommon in this sort of weather, but with the added benefit of hiding his shaven features. Veering off the path, he made for the stockade. The gate to the prison was a simple timber affair held shut with a bar and presenting no hole large enough for a man to pass through. The two locals who were apparently set to guard it looked cold and bored, and neither even bothered to challenge him as he stepped towards the gate, motioning a greeting at them.

Slowing his horse, he bent and peered through the wooden posts of the entrance. The locking bar was clearly unnecessary, which partially accounted for the lax attitude of the pair outside. He could count twenty three Romans in the circular stockade, each filthy and most freezing and naked, a few clinging to the rags of their russet coloured tunics for warmth if not modesty. Each man within was tethered by the wrists to an iron ring driven into the heavy timber posts of the stockade. None of them would be able to move more than a few feet, and they clearly had no hope of escape. Many of them had clearly been beaten, burned and tortured, but his eyes fell specifically on a bull-shouldered bald man sitting opposite. His attire was no different from the rest, but one look at his defiant, solid posture and the strength and complete lack of fear and surrender in his eyes told Cavarinos what he was: he was a centurion. The Arverni noblemen had seen enough of them in his time. The hardest bastards in the Roman world, bar none, gladiators included. They bent their knee to no one except their commander and the gods. The man had clearly been beaten and torn to within an inch of his life, but his eyes remained clear and defiant as he locked them on the visitor at the gate.