It was Fronto’s turn to frown now. ‘What?’
‘Glykon, the little shit weasel. What are you doing with him?’
Fronto felt as though a trapdoor had opened beneath him. ‘Glykon?’
‘Of course. He’s been Hierocles’ man since the dawn of the wine trade. I believe they’re distant cousins.’
Fronto blinked and took another slug of wine. Suddenly the reason for his employee’s presence in the warehouse the other night became startlingly clear. In fact, he’d be willing to bet that the commanding voice he’d heard from the leader with the sword
was
Glykon. And the man had switched sides and saved Fronto when he realised their ‘theft’ had gone wrong and the gang had been spotted. Damn it, how had he missed all this?
‘Shit. Why has no one told me before?’
‘Because you’re a Roman, Fronto. You’re about as popular as a turd in a bath to most of these people. I’ll bet the new taxes are squeezing you tight, eh?’
‘You have no idea,’ Fronto sighed.
‘You want my advice?’
‘Given the evidence so far, I’d be a fool to turn it down.’
Catháin grinned. ‘Have someone you trust check into all your employees. Hierocles is a devious bastard and he’ll get under your skin. Get rid of Glykon and vet the rest carefully. I’ve seen your workers down on the docks, too. Half of them are soldiers with no idea what they’re doing. Separate your guards, your household, and your workforce completely. The guards might think they’re being helpful, but your workers would actually be more efficient if the others stayed out of things altogether.’
‘Can’t really argue with you on any of that.’
‘Then, the only way you’re going to be able to beat the high tax legally is by improving your business. Secure cheaper sources, markets and transport and seek out buyers as yet untouched by Hierocles so you can carve out a niche from which to expand your influence.’
Fronto blew out a heavy breath and leaned back in his seat. ‘Are you for hire?’
‘That, my Roman friend, depends upon how much you’re paying.’
Fronto snorted. ‘My wife is busy spending a small fortune on rubbish at the moment. I’ll give you a standard teamster’s wage and Glykon’s pay on top as soon as I fire him. That should be about right for a foreman, I reckon?’
Catháin chuckled. ‘On one condition. When I start to make you money, I take an extra five percent cut of all profits.’
‘Done.’
Fronto grinned as he drained the last of his cup. ‘Now I shall go to the bar, buy a small amphora of Rhodian to seal the deal, and you can tell me about where you come from, since I cannot for the life of me place your accent.’
TITUS Mittius rubbed his hands together and blew into them to warm them. Irritatingly, he’d thrown dice with a fellow prefect over duty assignments two months ago and the other officer – the lucky bastard – had secured the supply depot at Arausio in the Rhodanus valley. Apart from the occasional strong wind, that area was a good Roman one, and close enough to the southern coast that the temperature was noticeably warmer. Here at Brivas, in the lands of the Arverni, the great Cevenna mountains kept any warmth at bay and locked the land in cold winter. Frost had formed on his saddle.
‘How many more do we have unhomed?’
‘Unhomed, sir? None. But many of the houses are near-ruinous. A winter of neglect, you see, sir.’
A winter of neglect.
Because a large portion of the former inhabitants of this Arverni town were now either in the burial pits at Alesia or the slave markets of Massilia and Rome. His job as ‘resettlement officer’ for the Arverni sounded extremely grand, and it certainly involved plenty of variety, travelling around the tribe’s lands and allocating property and trade from the dead to the living poor. Trying to build workable communities from the war-ravaged survivors, so that by spring there would be enough inhabitants to allow the town to live on. It sounded like the very best side of Rome. One might be tempted to consider the seedier side of it, of course. Because when the settlement had the best population manageable and everyone had a home, land and whatever else they needed to live, all those goods that went unclaimed were requisitioned by Rome and sent back to the quartermasters to sell or reassign. But on a practical level it worked for everyone. The Arverni benefitted from Roman organisation helping them rebuild, and Rome gleaned a little profit from the endeavour.
‘Very well, Aulus. Once the assignments and musters are complete, send the foraging parties out to the local area and gather stone and timber. Most of these places should be repairable and anywhere you find that isn’t, pull it down and reuse the materials. I want Brivas to be self-supporting by the end of Januarius. Then we move on to Revessio.’
The centurion saluted and marched away to his men.
Mittius sighed and looked about the oppidum of Brivas. It was not a defensive place, particularly. More of a civil settlement by the river. It had potential, mind. Reminded him rather of Falerii Novi, his hometown thirty miles north of Rome. In a time of peace, when the summer sun burned the moisture from the land, Brivas might even be described as pleasant.
He shivered in the icy breeze and led his horse around the shattered, ruinous remnant of a building. Not pleasant at the moment, mind.
Time to write a letter to Marcia. The couriers would be coming through tomorrow on their way east. He would receive any new orders from the proconsul’s staff, and the riders would take any missives on for Cisalpine Gaul and for Rome. He tried to think what he would say. He missed her. He was pleased with what he was doing and proud to be bringing civilisation and the Pax Romana to the world. He hoped the girls were being good and that young Sciavus had stopped sniffing around after them. Gaul was cold, and he was looking forward to…
Titus Mittius gasped as the cord slipped round his neck and tightened. He was no stranger to combat and his fingers immediately reached down to the sword at his side, but were smashed numb with something heavy and his sword was drawn from its sheath and confiscated. He tried to cry out. Aulus could only be on the other side of this damn building! But the cord around his neck was choking him. Powerless, he gave in and stopped struggling as each movement brought a slight tightening of the cord.
His assailants moved into view, and he felt a supernatural shiver run through him. Several of them, wearing voluminous, heavy, black cloaks with deep hoods, and each sporting a mask with a chillingly friendly expression. Identical masks. Somehow the slight smile in the visage made the figures all the more menacing. Two of them took his horse’s reins and moved the beast on. They were being so brazen in full daylight. Most of the populace and the soldiers were across the river, running through allocations and ledgers, of course, but there would still be occasional legionaries, and centurion Aulus Critus, up here in the settlement, while they catalogued and gathered everything for redistribution.
Knowing that he was helpless, Mittius allowed himself to be moved forward towards the house that served as his home and headquarters as long as he was in Brivas. In the most amazingly professional manner, given his predicament, he began to take mental notes. They were wearing trousers and leg wrappings that clearly labelled them Gauls, and probably locals. Either Arverni or other tribes nearby. They included women among their number, for one of the two leading the horse moved with the sway of hips that made her gender obvious. Their masks looked like the cult masks the Gauls used at some of their religious ceremonies. That last thought panicked him, for like every Roman in the army he had heard the horror stories of what druids did to Roman prisoners in their crazed, dangerous cults.
No one came to his aid, despite his hopes, and a few moments later he was being shoved roughly through the door to his house. In the rear, a spring that rose from the ground in the back garden flowed through the house along a wide stone trough and then out to the settlement again. He’d wondered about this curious little piece of hydro-engineering when he arrived, and one of the locals had explained that this house had belonged to a butcher, who used the water in his work. Indeed, many hooks hung from the rafters and he tried not to think too much about them right now.
His hands were jerked round behind his back and tied tightly together, and the pressure of the cord on his throat loosened slightly, allowing him to heave in a deep breath of life-giving air.
‘I don’t know who you are, but we are here for the good of the people of Brivas,’ he hazarded, hoping to shatter their prejudices with a little well-placed explanation.
‘Quiet!’ snapped the woman in horribly-accented Latin, and a big man who had been just out of sight behind him stepped forward.
‘Hardly quiet, Belisama. I want him talking. I want him talking a lot.’ This voice was like clotted blood in a wound, like pitch bubbling from a swamp. It made the Roman shudder.
The big figure turned to Mittius.
‘I am going to ask you three questions, Prefect. Be aware from the start that you are already a dead man. But how that happens is up to you. You will either die of drowning, or a cut throat, or strangulation, or simple beating. If you are truly unhelpful, it may be more than one. Are you prepared?’
Mittius straightened. He was terrified. The warm, wet feeling down his leg made that absolutely clear. But he was also a soldier of Rome and whatever it was these people wanted, they were clearly enemies of the republic.
‘You’ll learn nothing from me, when you burst into a peaceful settlement and interrupt the process of trying to restore the land after the war, you
animals
!’
The big man shook off his hood and reached up, peeling the mask away from his features. The raw, torn, ravaged thing that sat behind the mask sent a shockwave of dread and revulsion through Mittius.
‘The next half hour is, for you, going to be a time of woe, I think,’ the monster said, smiling through a torn face.
* * * * *
Molacos of the Cadurci washed his hands in the spring water until the last of the pink tinge ran off out through the hole in the wall and off through the garden. Rising from a crouch, he dried them on his trousers and looked down at the remains of the Roman, whose throat had suffered periodic, agonising restriction so many times that the red rings around his neck formed a striped collar. The top of his head was matted with blood where the skull had cracked and all four limbs were at unpleasant angles from the body slumped over the trough. Despite the beatings and the strangulations the man had been surprisingly strong-willed, and in the end he had been allowed to drown only until his lungs were full and burning and then, while still conscious and panicked, he’d been pulled back from the stream and his throat hacked from side to side with a serrated knife.
Oh, the prefect of the Arverni resettlement had died badly.
Molacos hated Romans more than any living thing in the world, and he would tear the heart from a Roman girl-child without flinching. But he respected strength. And even while he had hated this prefect as much as any other man of the legions, he had to acknowledge grudgingly that the soldier had remained a man to the end, despite everything.
He turned. Ten other figures stood in the shadowy interior, only a couple of them still disguised.
‘Still nothing, then,’ old Cernunnos rasped, one of the few still donning the mask.
‘No. But someone will answer me in time. And while they resist, we get to kill Roman officers. There can be no goal more true than ours and no path more just. Every one of these vermin that graces his afterlife alleviates the Roman blight on the world of men.’
‘Where next?’ asked Rudianos, his flame red hair framing a pale, serious face.
‘There is a supply depot at Segeta. That is on a major Roman route, and officers there will be well-informed.’ Molacos frowned. ‘Where is Catubodua?’
‘Out stalking some legionary she saw from the window.’
The nightmare-faced warrior snarled. ‘Idiot woman. Go bring her back. We must move on before our actions are noted and we bring two centuries down upon us. She knows better than that.’
‘You know the widow. If she has two heartbeats to put together she will use them to kill a Roman.’
Molacos grinned, the effect something demonic and horrible. ‘Give me an army of Catuboduas and I would eradicate Rome altogether. Still, her vengeance must wait, or our task will fail. Go fetch her while we ready the horses. Segeta awaits us.’
‘THE legions look positively eager,’ Brutus noted, wiping a hand across his face and flicking the excess rain away. With a sour look he reached up and pulled back the hood of his cloak, which was now so sodden that the hair beneath it was soaked.
‘Of course they look eager,’ Varus replied in an acid tone. ‘They’ve all heard of Caesar’s largesse with the Eleventh and the Thirteenth. Now every man in the Sixth and the Fourteenth is anticipating a similar donative. Let’s hope the Carnutes have a few silver mines as well, or the general might end up out of pocket on this trip.’
Brutus gave a humourless chuckle. Upon their return to winter quarters, following the restoration of the Bituriges, Caesar had codified the payouts to the legions involved so that those men who had received less of the spoils had been topped up from the general’s own funds. The legionaries and cavalrymen had been granted two hundred sesterces – a bonus worth two months’ pay. The centurions had received two
thousand
apiece. Now, those two legions were back at their bases, living a wild and comfortable life and still managing to put away a little towards their retirement.
The general, his staff and the cavalry had returned to Bibracte, where the general opened proceedings for his assizes and patronage as though Gaul were already a province and the Aedui capital a provincial city in the manner of Aquileia or Salona.
Then, mere weeks after the resettling of the legions, deputations had arrived once more from the Bituriges. Having again taken control of their own cities following the rising of the rebel elements within their own tribe, it seemed that their ever-difficult northern neighbours, the Carnutes, had taken advantage of their weakness and unpreparedness and begun to campaign in Bituriges lands, capturing their settlements and taking slaves and booty wherever possible.
It beggared belief that the army had barely had time to take an evening meal after aiding the Bituriges and there they were again, asking for more help. In other times, Varus might have suspected a trap or some other foul play, or at least some deep, subtle manoeuvring. But the simple fact was that the Bituriges were in trouble and, having lost more than two thirds of their warrior class against Rome, they were in no position to defend themselves. And the Carnutes were a troublesome bunch, for certain. Two years ago, it had been that tribe who had triggered the great revolt with the savage destruction of Cenabum.
So the general had nodded seriously and reassured the Biturige loyalists that he would not allow them to suffer while Rome was here to protect them. Varus had felt just an inkling of suspicion at the general’s reaction. Caesar had not been remotely surprised. It was quite possible, of course, given the man’s legendary agile mind, that he had already thought through this possibility. Or perhaps, Varus thought maliciously, the general had been stirring something up in order to provide another excuse to march out from camp. The war was essentially over, and the only plunder to be had now would be against the few remaining rebels. It was an unworthy thought for a Roman officer to have about a peer, but Varus couldn’t help remembering all the talk back at the start of the campaign that Caesar had managed to manipulate the Helvetii into fleeing into Gaul purely as an excuse to invade the fertile and rich land that had so long been anathema to Rome.
And so in early Februarius the general had agreed to let the Thirteenth and Eleventh rest and recuperate, and had sent for the Sixth and the Fourteenth legions from Cavillonum, a day’s march southeast, where they had been in charge of grain storage, gathering and distribution. As soon as the legions had reached Bibracte and mustered, Varus and the cavalry had joined them once more and the army had begun the all-too-familiar journey west into Biturige lands.
In addition to the trouble from the Carnutes, Februarius had also brought rain and a daily blanket of morning fog, and the journey through the oft-marshy lands of the Bituriges was an eerie, white and wet trek, full of nerve-wracking shadowy shapes and muffled noises.
The first few days had been a tiring and dispiriting slog through dismal and sparsely-populated lands. Those settlements the Biturige envoys had announced to be under Carnute attack had been cold and deserted when the legions reached them. The enemy had clearly been there and had stripped the poorly-defended oppida of humanity, livestock and all valuable goods. All that remained was a land of ghosts and the skeletons of towns mouldering in the landscape, picked clean by the Carnute crows.
On one particularly soul destroying morning the cavalry had ridden out ahead to check another silent, lifeless oppidum, and Varus had recognised with a heavy heart one of the fortresses they had been forced to besiege the previous month. A settlement which had been saved from rapine on Caesar’s orders and which had thereafter been returned to its legal rulers. The Roman move to save the city’s goods and populace from their own traitors had been worthless – they had simply preserved the Bituriges’ value to make them a valid target for the marauding Carnutes instead.
As soon as it became clear that the armies were too late to do anything about the raids, the nature of the campaign changed. Disregarding the last few westernmost Biturige towns, Caesar had turned his army north and the legions had marched from ravaged Bituriges territory into that of the Carnutes who had so recently raided them.
Half a day into those lands now, the army had passed four former Carnute settlements, all now long-destroyed, their charred timbers testament to punitive campaigns under Plancus, Marcus Antonius and Caesar himself, as well as the effects of having had legions wintered here over several years. It appeared that few of the Carnute towns remained habitable, and the army found traces more than once of gigantic nomadic sites where large numbers of people had camped for months in a huddle of makeshift temporary shelters.
Varus had been grudgingly opened to the possibility that the very reason the Carnutes were now preying upon their ravaged neighbours might be because the once troublesome tribe now had nothing but the clothes on their backs. If the Carnutes had been forced to change to a temporary nomadic lifestyle with no personal wealth, then raiding the weak would become a natural move for survival. Had Rome’s seemingly endless war in Gaul been so ruinous? How could the land ever hope to recover from this? It simply accentuated the folly of continued rebellion.
And now, in the mid-afternoon of the first day among the Carnutes, finally there were signs of life.
Blesio was not one of the tribe’s largest or most powerful oppida, yet it had the distinction of being one of few that apparently remained intact. Settled on the north bank of the Liger on a low rise, its walls remained intact and, though they were few and far between, there were occasional columns of smoke wavering up into the wet, grey sky.
The near bank was a glorious wide field of green grass sloping gently to the river. Yet even here, so close to a surviving oppidum, there were signs that a shanty-town of a thousand or more had spent some time in residence opposite the walled settlement. Ahead of the legions, Caesar and a small group of senior officers walked their horses between the areas of dead grass that had been beneath tent leather mere days earlier.
‘Looks to me like this lot moved on recently,’ Brutus murmured.
‘Do you think they were the ones who destroyed the Bituriges cities?’ asked the quiet figure of Lucius Caesar, cousin of the general and legate of the Sixth.
The proconsul pursed his lips and shook the rain from his thinning hair. ‘This could well have been a warband of some sort, Lucius. There is little sign of civilian life here. It would certainly explain their recent disappearance, with the legions approaching.’
Varus nodded and pointed down to the nearest of the patches of dead grass.
‘Look there. Twisted rope. Part of a slave’s bindings, I’d say. Looks like the Carnutes came back this way with a column of captives.’
‘But why camp here when there is a perfectly serviceable oppidum across the river?’ the general’s cousin frowned.
Varus sighed. The stick-like Lucius Julius Caesar was a perfectly acceptable commander, and he seemed to know his work, but despite serving last year during the height of the troubles, he was yet to become familiar with Gaul and its workings.
‘Likely not all the Carnutes are ravaging their neighbours. Those who still have a town and a population are probably content to simply try and survive the winter long enough to rebuild their lives. I would be willing to wager that the raiders who camped here were refused admittance to the oppidum. Any Carnute leader with his mind on the future will weigh up his options and come down on any side that doesn’t bring the legions to his hearth.’
Caesar nodded. ‘Let us not tar the whole tribe with the deeds of a vicious few. Come. There is a ferry ahead. We will speak to the locals.’
At the general’s order, Varus and Brutus rode forth, along with Lucius Caesar and Glabrio, the two legates in the force. Behind them, close and protective as always, rode Aulus Ingenuus and a dozen of his best Praetorian cavalrymen. The ferry across the Liger that served the Carnute oppidum was little more than an oversized raft with a tethering rail and two burly natives with oars. Varus eyed the vessel suspiciously as they approached. It might feasibly carry four men and their horses across the river, on the assumption that the horses stood perfectly still, the raft was entirely sturdy, and the two men were trustworthy. He would not put money on it. The men looked extremely fidgety and nervous, and well they might, with roughly twelve thousand Romans descending upon them.
‘General, you can’t go on that.’
Caesar turned with a curious smile. ‘I most certainly can, Varus, and I most certainly will. How can I expect my legions to perform the unthinkable with heart and aplomb if I am not willing to risk a rickety ferry ride? Besides, I am labouring under no misapprehension that Aulus here would let me go without the continued presence of a guardsman. Would you care to make up a third passenger, Varus?’
The cavalry commander sighed. The general was ever one to play up to the troops and show off, and now his unnecessary bravado had placed Varus in the position of either appearing cowardly or trusting to the raft. ‘Of course, General.’ He watched Caesar’s eyes sparkle as the man laughed with carefree ease. There was a growing group among the officers who worried that Caesar was beginning to believe in the rumours that he was indestructible. The way he acted sometimes suggested as much.
‘Come.’
The Proconsul of Gaul and Illyricum swung from his mount and slid to the ground, walking his horse down to the riverside where the two ferrymen waited beneath the eaves of their small hut.
‘Good day, gentlemen. Do either of you speak Latin?’
The two men frowned in incomprehension, and Caesar smiled. ‘Ingenuus, you can come over on the second trip. I want your man with the local dialect with me on this journey.’
Varus caught Ingenuus’ expression and was under no illusion as to what the bodyguard officer thought of the idea, but they had all been around Caesar long enough to know how little chance there was of changing his mind. The only man who’d ever had that kind of influence was Fronto, and
he
was probably busy now swimming in a pool of the money he’d made in Massilia.
The Praetorian trooper in question, one Sidonius, rode forward at his commander’s signal and, at a nod from Caesar, rattled out a question in the local language. The ferrymen looked at one another and stuttered out a reply.
‘They have not a word of Latin, general. They claim loyalty to Rome and to be men of Blesio across the river, which they say is also loyal to its Roman vows.’
Caesar nodded and favoured the two men with an easy smile. ‘Ask them how much they charge for a man with his horse?’
The trooper did so, and cleared his throat before replying ‘One copper coin apiece, general, but they say there will be no charge for the Roman commander and his officers.’
Caesar laughed lightly. ‘Nonsense. With the current state of Gaul, every denarius counts for these people. Tell him that we have eighteen riders to ferry across in six trips. If he can do it without incident, he will receive one good Roman silver sestertius for each man from my own purse. Brutus? Have word sent to the legions to make camp on the south bank tonight, pending a decision on our course tomorrow.’
As Brutus nodded and turned, the news was relayed to the ferry owners and the two locals’ eyes widened as they bowed sycophantically. Without waiting, Caesar gestured to Varus and Sidonius, who dismounted and followed the general to the raft. As the two ferrymen readied for the journey – the Liger was a wide river here, and fast-flowing – Caesar and the other Romans tied their nervous horses’ reins to the bar and held on tight while the raft shook and juddered off the mud and slowly out into the current. Varus couldn’t help but note the look of anxious disapproval on Ingenuus’ face as he watched from the bank, where he prepared to come across next with Brutus and another of the praetorians.
The raft was sturdy, and despite the size and speed of the river its surface was remarkably calm, and soon Varus found his fears of capsizing or destruction fading. The general gestured to Sidonius.
‘Would you ask them if a large band of rebels recently passed through here, perhaps with loot and captives?’
The trooper relayed the question and the two men, their faces revealing their nervous state, nodded and rushed out a reply.