Marius' Mules II: The Belgae (52 page)

“
Nemetocenna is the main oppidum of the Atrebates and very much
at the heart of the resisting area so far. Call all the tribes to a
council at Nemetocenna by the kalends of September. I am taking the
rest of the army as soon as things are settled here to deal with
the Aduatuci and we shall aim to return by then.”

Labienus
frowned.

“
Caesar, is it not more important that you are here to deal
with the politics of victory? Any number of us can take the battle
to the Aduatuci.”

The general
shook his head.

“
I have defeated, or allied with, all of the main tribes of the
Belgae. When I return to Cisalpine Gaul and then Rome for the
winter, I will have it known that Caesar has defeated the greatest
of all the peoples of the north. My political enemies will be
forced to acknowledge this. How will it look if I leave things
incomplete and one of my subordinates fights the final battle for
me?”

He looked
around the room. Fronto tried very hard to become invisible, as he
was sure his face would betray his own opinions on the matter.

“
No. I will finish this myself. Labienus, you will send out
your scouts and then take your force along with most of the baggage
train and all of the wounded and journey to Nemetocenna. When you
arrive you will impose Roman law on the oppidum. You will construct
not just a temporary camp, but a fortress like those we built in
Spain, with defences, high walls and buildings within, rather than
tents. Given the location of Nemetocenna at the heart of the
Belgae, I want you to make a statement.”

He smiled that
hollow and humourless smile once again.

“
And, when I return, I shall bring either the head of the
Aduatuci, or the head of the head of the Aduatuci!”

He waved his
hand dismissively.

“
Go about your business, gentlemen. Every healthy man will be
forming up under either Labienus or myself and leaving first thing
in the morning. Labienus? I will leave you to deal with the
post-battle matters. I need to plan.”

The officers
hurried out of the tent, Fronto moving as fast as he could to avoid
being waylaid by the general. Outside, just out of audible range of
the tent, Labienus was grumbling.

“
What’s up?”

“
Too much to do with too few men. I think we need our own
planning meeting.”

He glanced
over his shoulder at the various officers marching away down the
hill.

“
All officers to assemble in the remains of the Nervian camp
opposite in ten minutes. Be there, or I’ll find you!”

Fronto
laughed.

“
Don’t know what you’re giggling about” grumbled the staff
officer. “You’re coming too.”

Labienus
looked around at the expectant faces of the officers. The walk
across the battlefield had not been a pleasant one. Many of the
bodies still lay where they had fallen, including some Romans.
Here, beyond the opposite ridge, the camp of the Nervii had been
cleared of corpses when the men had looted it, but there was still
an acrid and sickly-sweet smell that didn’t bear too much thinking
about.

However, not
only was this sufficiently far away from the headquarters for them
to be undisturbed by the general, it was also away from where the
men were busy clearing up the worst of the mess.

“
Alright, tell me what the situation is. First of all, what’s
our total count of healthy regulars?”

Sabinus
shrugged and opened the wax tablets he’d brought with him.

“
I can break it down for you, but the grand total is now
sixteen thousand men fit for active duty out of a strength on paper
of almost thirty six thousand.”

Labienus shook
his head despairingly.

“
Gods! I know we were already under strength to start with, but
that means we lost roughly half the army this morning!”

Sabinus nodded
silently. Every officer had been keeping himself occupied so as not
to think too much on the numbers.

“
There are so many dead, along with the auxilia,” Rufus noted
quietly, “that they’re being separated into four groups for burning
and burial to make it easier for digging the ditches and raising
the mounds.”

Sabinus
straightened.

“
Alright then. I’ll take around three thousand of the men. I’ll
draw five centuries from each of the six stronger legions and take
the entire Twelfth.” He looked up at Galba. “I’m not meaning to
take any glory away from you, my friend, but I rather believe that
your men will appreciate the rest.”

The stocky
legate nodded.

“
I agree entirely. But will you need three thousand? There
should be no armies left to raise in the west.”

Labienus
nodded.

“
Caesar probably hasn’t thought it all out yet, but we’ll have
ninety per cent of the wagon train to guard, as he’ll be wanting to
travel fast and light. We’ll have all of the wounded, which is a
lot, to look after. He wants us to impose ourselves on Nemetocenna,
which would be hard to do with a handful of men. He wants us to
build a sizeable fortress…”

He suddenly
stopped and tapped his temple.

“
That means I’ll need some good engineers.”

Fronto
smiled.

“
I can provide them for you.”

“
Good. And, of course, there’ll be prisoners to guard and booty
to transport. To be honest, I think three thousand men’s stretching
things a little thin.”

The group went
silent again.

“
How long til the legions have cleared away the bodies and
buried everyone?”

Fronto
shrugged and almost bit through his tongue at the horrifying pain
in his arm.

“
A few more hours. My lads are moving through the Roman dead
like a swarm of locusts, looking for our training
centurion.”

Sabinus raised
an eyebrow.

“
Velius?”

Fronto nodded.
Not been seen since we pushed into the Atrebates. I suspect he’ll
be found shortly.

“
Sad.”

The officers
all lowered their gaze and eventually Labienus sighed and took a
deep breath.

“
Very well. Prisoners. How many have we taken today, and how
many do we have in total?”

Crispus
stepped forward from where he’d been hovering on the periphery.

“
I’m not at all sure how many we had originally. The moment we
left Samarobriva, Caesar had the walking wounded and some of the
Gallic levies escort the prisoners back to Vesontio. I expect they
are already on the way to the slave markets in Rome.”

Labienus
nodded.

“
So now?”

“
Now we have around six and a half thousand prisoners; a
mixture of Viromandui, Atrebates and Nervii. Mostly Viromandui,
though, since the others fought almost to extinction. Varus
captured the command party, by the looks of it. He found the head
man of the Nervii trying to sneak away through the woods along with
some of his warriors.”

Labienus
laughed.

“
Good. That should lend some weight to our demands when we get
to Nemetocenna.”

Fronto cleared
his throat.

“
Be prepared to carry out the peace on your own while Caesar
carries out the war. I’ve seen the maps and I know these Belgae and
their sieges. I can’t see a chance in hell of the general being
back before at least the nones of September, if not the
ides.”

Labienus
smiled.

“
Then I’ll have to delegate some of it to you.”

“
Me?” Fronto shook his head.

“
Yes, you. You’re wounded and with only one working arm. You
get to go with us.”

Fronto
grinned.

“
If you think for one minute a broken arm is keeping me out of
battle to sit and be talked to death by dozens of native
chieftains, you've got another thing coming!"

* * * * *

Fronto stood
impatiently watching his tent being erected. His furniture, such as
it was, lay close by, waiting to be positioned inside. He’d stopped
them removing it all from the cart, though. Just the cot and a
chair. It was hardly worth moving any more since the whole army
would be departing at first light in one direction or the other and
everything would have to be taken down and stowed in around ten
hours.

Sabinus, given
the task of overseeing the camp’s creation in the absence of the
trained and experienced camp prefect Paetus, strode across the open
ground and watched with interest as the leather tent panels were
fastened together and stretched across the wooden frame.

“
Fascinating, isn’t it?”

Fronto turned
and raised an eyebrow. He realised he was absent-mindedly rubbing
his bad arm again. How the hell could he not even waggle it
slightly? It was obviously still alive, or it wouldn’t hurt so
bloody much.

“
What?”

“
Watching the men setting camp. I’ve never really spent a lot
of time watching it, but it’s such a smooth, regimented system.
Paetus has got the procedure drilled so heavily into the heads of
the men that I’m not really doing anything useful. Just
watching.”

Fronto
grumbled.

“
You need to be careful saying things like that. In this army,
that kind of comment could land you the job
permanently.”

“
You’re a ray of sunshine as usual, Marcus.”

Another
grumble.

“
I have this horrible feeling…”

Sabinus
frowned.

“
Not sure I like the sound of that. You had a bad feeling about
this and we lost half the damned army.”

The legate
nodded.

“
I’m torn. There’s very little I can think of that I’d less
rather do that go with Labienus and set up political allegiances
and make deals and pacts. But on the other hand, Nemesis is making
my head itch. There’s something looming and I think it’s got
something to do with the Aduatuci.”

Sabinus
laughed, though Fronto detected a definite edge to it.

“
You’re a practical man, Fronto. You always have been. Don’t
tell me you’re turning into some sort of haruspex?”

Fronto
laughed, but noted that subtly, at waist level, Sabinus had made
the sign to ward off evil. He opened his mouth to say something
suitably disparaging, but clamped it shut again as a voice from
behind called his name. He turned to see Balbus hurrying up the
slope alongside Priscus.

“
What’s important enough to make you two run?”

Balbus heaved
down air, his face rosy, and Priscus took a deep breath. Something
about his expression set the legate very much on edge.

“
You need to come see this, Fronto.”

Sabinus
blinked. While it was generally understood and accepted that Fronto
and his Primus Pilus had a somewhat informal relationship, to
address his commander in such a fashion in front of two more senior
officers was something of a breech of etiquette. What had Priscus
so riled that he forgot entirely about propriety?

Fronto’s brow
furrowed.

“
Tell me.”

"They've found
Velius. I wasn't kidding... you need to see it."

“
It?” Suddenly Fronto was running in the direction from which
the centurion had come, the other three hot on his heels.
“Where?”

Priscus,
quickly catching up, pointed off toward the woods to the west.

“
How the hell did he get there? He must have fallen in the
midst of the Atrebates, like I did.”

There was no
answer from the primus pilus, but he picked up speed and jogged out
ahead to lead the way. Sabinus and Balbus caught up with Fronto and
the three men, in varying states of exhaustion, ran on after the
centurion.

The way
through the woods was easy. Fronto hadn’t ventured to them since
the battle’s end, but was aware that they had harboured a sizeable
part of the Belgic army prior to the fight. There was hardly any
undergrowth left, and what there was had been trampled flat.

Indeed, as the
four men passed under the eaves, Fronto became aware of just how
many men must have hidden here behind their wicker screens covered
in leaves, preventing them from being seen by the Roman army on the
slope. And not all of the footprints he could identify, some
bare-footed, some in Celtic boots and other in caligae, were
heading to the battlefield. There were a number of tracks that told
the story of the survivors of the Atrebates and the Nervii who had
fled into these woods and picked their way quietly through them.
Probably some escaped to run home to their families, but others
fell foul of Varus’ men at the wood’s western edge and were now in
chains.

Suddenly he
became aware of conversation. Peering between the trees and plants,
he spotted around a dozen legionaries with an optio in a small
clearing. Priscus was making straight for them.

The legate
found, as he stepped from the deeper wood into the clearing, that
his pulse had quickened and there was an uncomfortable lump in his
throat. During the hours of waiting while the men searched through
and retrieved all of the Roman bodies on the battlefield, Fronto
had, sadly and slowly, begun to come to terms with the idea that
Velius had gone. It seemed impossible when he thought about that
grizzled face; the man had always seemed near indestructible but,
realistically, it was actually astounding that only one of the
three of them had died, given the suicidally reckless action they
had undertaken.