Marius Mules III: Gallia Invicta (Marius' Mules) (56 page)

“I know this is going to sound petty, Carbo, but I was rather hoping the tents would go up first before you started chopping the forest down?”

The centurion smiled, the sweat running from beneath the brow of his helmet and trickling down his cheek to his chin. Thunder was coming; probably before nightfall, and the lack of air was almost unbearable.

“Camp prefect gave us all orders, legate, supported by the general. Caesar wants the palisade, mound and ditch up before anything else.”

Fronto rolled his eyes.

“I notice that doesn’t apply to
him
.
His
tent is up and furnished already.”

“If you don’t mind me saying, sir” Carbo grinned, “it isn’t seemly for a senior officer to be parading round like that in front of the men. If you’re not going to wear your armour, you should be all togate and patrician.”

Fronto stared at him.

“It’s as sweaty as a Numidian’s boot here. I’m having enough trouble breathing in this armpit of a country without slapping on layers of leather and steel too. I don’t know how you can stand it under all that equipment.”

“Practice, sir. Well…” he winked knowingly ”practice and a lack of underwear, anyway.”

“There are some things, Carbo, that you really don’t need to share with me. Are you sure you can’t spare just four men to help me get the command tent up. I could find a nice convincing military reason if you like.”

The centurion laughed.

“If you don’t tell the general, sir, I’ll spare the men.”

He turned to the group of four legionaries who were busy a few feet away, hacking away at the bole of an oak with their axes. He had opened his mouth to speak, but the smile slid from his face.

“To arms!” he bellowed, and, as the men turned to look at him, three arrows thudded into the timber, a fourth passing straight through a legionary’s neck and continuing merrily on its path as the surprised man grasped his throat with both hands, his eyes wide.

Fronto stared.

“Oh shit, shit, shit.”

Around them legionaries across the edge of the woods scrambled back to grab their weapons, helmets and shields that lay in bundles nearby. Here and there a screech announced that another arrow had found its target.

Fronto ignored the man and dived to the ground where a legionary had left his shield lying with his helmet, sword and other gear on it. Picking up the sword, he tipped the rest from the shield and slid his arm into the straps before jamming his helmet firmly back on his head.

“Sir” Carbo said again, his voice admonishing.

“Rally to me!” Fronto called.

As the men of the Tenth, along with a few stray workers from the Eighth and the Fourteenth, ran toward the officer’s call, Carbo glared at him and then collected his own shield.

“Form up!” the huge Gaulish centurion bellowed as he fell in to the other side of Fronto, his shoulder at the same height as the legate’s scalp. Soldiers began to form a line around them, raising their shields protectively as arrowed continued to whistle out of the woodland.

“Here they come” Fronto pointed.

Among the trees, the figures were clearer, more pronounced, as they neared the edge. The arrows stopped coming and suddenly warriors were pouring out of the forest, brandishing a variety of weapons and screaming guttural war cries as they bore down on the Romans, many of whom were still unarmoured, gathering their weapons or running to fall in.

“What’s going on?” Fronto barked as he was suddenly squeezed between the two centurions until he found himself pushed out past them and standing behind the defensive line.

“Stay back, sir.”

Fronto glared angrily at the men in front of him. He began to form a diatribe in his mind along the lines of how Priscus and Velius would never have dared to do such a thing, but realised with a strange fondness that this was
exactly
the sort of thing his old friends would have done. The more things changed, the more they stayed the same. But just like those former veterans, these two had underestimated how headstrong their commander was.

Ducking to the side, avoiding the enormous looming bulk of Atenos, he gazed over Carbo’s shoulder. The enemy were almost on them. Legionaries were now falling in to either side of him, nodding respectfully as they took up their position in the second line. Fronto looked past them. Other soldiers had been less prepared or just less fortunate, and disappeared with a scream under the blows of axes and swords before they could reach their gear.

The legate concentrated for a moment, cocking his head and lifting the cheek-piece of his helmet. His fears were confirmed by the distant shouts and buccina calls: this was no small localised attack. The Menapii and their allies had waited just out of sight in the woods until their Roman pursuers had become complacent enough to drop their defensive line and go about the work of constructing the camp.

The surprise had paid off. Roman bodies littered the edge of the wood just within sight of Fronto, around the area the Tenth and Fourteenth worked. This could have been a disaster, but for the fact that the men were disciplined, trained, and prepared for just this sort of circumstance. This very tactic had almost obliterated the Twelfth last year and these days no work party went about their business without their weapons and armour close to hand.

The enemy rushed on, warriors approaching the rapidly-forming shield wall and slowing to a more cautious pace. Elsewhere the situation was different, the Celts swarming over small pockets of Romans fleeing the trees. Here, though, the centurions were forming a solid defence quickly and efficiently.

As the enemy came on, running through the bracken and high grass, their fur-clad or naked torsos rippling, their muscular arms hefting axes, swords and spears, a man sprang onto a large rock, directly opposite them. His bushy beard and flaxen braids were peppered and tangled with bones and feathers, his arms wrapped in gold bangles, a grey, stained robe hanging limp in the warm, damp air. He bellowed something unintelligible and raised a staff, surmounted by a huge bird’s skull, waving it in encouragement.

“Druid” said Atenos flatly.

“That’s a bloody
druid
?” Fronto stared. “I thought they were all quiet and grim. That bugger looks like a cannibal madman!”

Atenos crouched for a moment and stood once more as the druid spat out curses and yelled something in a shrill voice, pointing at the officers with his bird-staff.

“Same to you” yelled Atenos and cast the large stone he had collected from the ground with a tremendous force and a surprising accuracy. The boulder caught the druid full in the face with a very unpleasant noise, hurling him from the rock and back into the unseen undergrowth behind. The staff arced up through the air and disappeared into the grass.

Fronto smiled as the two men continued to banter while the enemy finally reached the line and threw themselves at the shield wall. A sword was thrust toward them and Carbo casually turned it aside before flicking his blade back and driving it forward into the man’s bared chest.

Beside him, Atenos leaned back as a swung axe whistled past his nose before the big man leaned forward again, putting all his not-inconsiderable weight behind his shield and punching the bronzed boss into the man’s face, shattering bones.

The two men continued to hack, parry, stab and duck, occasionally sparing a moment to fire a snappy and sarcastic comment at each other. Fronto smiled as he backed out of the line, unnoticed by the two centurions. The legionaries shuffled to fill the gap.

Stretching, he tightened his grip on the gladius. Scanning left and right, he watched the fighting carefully.

To the right, sections of the Eighth legion had managed to create a solid shield wall, just like Carbo’s, and were bringing up the rest of their men to plug the gap where the worst of the fighting was going on and join up with the Tenth. The situation was very much under control there.

To the left, however, a group of soldiers from the Tenth and the Fourteenth were forming a small core defence, but were clearly beleaguered and outnumbered.

Fronto glanced over his shoulder to see a soldier, clutching an arm that ran with a river of crimson, jogging back toward the future site of the camp to find a capsarius.

“Sorry, lad. Go see the doctor, but find the reserves of the Tenth and the Eighth back there and tell them to stop digging and get down here.”

The soldier nodded, his teeth clenched against the pain, and ran on.

Fronto turned and took a deep breath. Carbo and Atenos and their growing force were beginning slowly to advance, pushing the desperately fighting Celts back toward the trees.

The combined units of the Tenth and Fourteenth were formed into some sort of mess of a war-band, rather than a solid shield wall. Hefting the sword and feeling a faint twang in his arm, the occasional reminder as to how close he’d come to losing it last year, he turned and ran off down the gentle slope toward the mess.

“Who’s in command here?”

The group, resembling a Belgic war band more than a Roman force, was fighting off enemies en masse and, miraculously, given the lack of defensive formation, seemed to be holding their own.

There was no answer but the constant grunting and crashing and battering noises as the legate stood at the relatively peaceful rear side of the group.

“I said: who’s in command here?”

“
You
are” a voice bellowed from the centre.

“Good. You’re about to be flanked. On my command, draw back three steps, keeping your shields to the enemy, and form a solid line.”

Pushing his way in among the men, he heaved his way through the bodies until he was only a few men from the front line, once more under severe pressure by the enemy warriors. Reaching out, he tapped a man on the shoulder.

“You’re the corner. Everyone to the right of you, swing back and form a side wall of shields.” Another man got a tap. “You’re the other corner. That’s it. Now form into a square and seal off the rear with another shield wall.”

He watched as best he could from amid the centre of the mass, wishing he had Atenos’ height advantage. The man must have the clearest view of what was going on around him in a fight. It appeared that the shapeless mob of men had, without having to bare its underbelly to the enemy, managed to reform into a good, defensive square.

He grinned as he hefted his sword again and shifted his grip on his shield.

Better still, he was involved in it, with no irritating underlings that knew him to force him back to dull safety. He leaned closer to the men in the second and first line in front of him.

“Are you lads going to be all good and deferential to a senior officer and make room for me? I’ve got an itch I need to scratch.”

* * * * *

Fronto gave a crazed grin as he lunged forward past the rim of his shield, plunging his sword into the mass of attacking barbarians and connecting with something soft and unseen. A squawk from somewhere among the pile of hairy, bellowing men announced his success. He withdrew the blade and shifted the shield slightly just in time to deflect the point of a spear, thrust from one of the warriors behind the front row.

It wasn’t that he had come to
enjoy
the killing, or at least he hoped not. It was a mix of two things: partially it was the sheer simplicity of an ‘us against them’ situation that took all the thought, complication and grey areas out of life and presented him with a very straightforward path and goal. But then there was also the incredibly cathartic release of pent up stress and anger.

The past months had brought so much pressure to bear on Fronto that he was almost weighed down to ground level. He hadn’t realised just how tense he’d been until these poor bastards had run out of the woods and directly into his path.

The situation in Rome was becoming worse all the time, with his family living in terror and having to be escorted to the market to buy food for fear that they might be attacked by the thugs of Clodius. Priscus was there, looking after them, but that was
Fronto’s
job, not his.

And then Priscus’ last letter had come and Fronto had almost torn himself to pieces, unable to decide how he felt about the knowledge that Paetus was alive, possibly a traitor to the army, certainly for some reason playing guardian spirit for Fronto’s family and friends, murdering noblewomen and likely with plans to deal harshly with Clodius and/or Caesar. He’d not shared that knowledge with anyone, least of all Caesar. If he were abiding by his loyalty to his patron, he should be telling the general about this potential danger, but for some reason he could not bring himself to do so.