‘Erm, Palmatus?’ Fronto said quietly. The unshaven former soldier turned and, noticing Antonius, gave a half-hearted salute. The smiling senior officer waved the formality aside, given the fact that the man in the mail shirt was officially a civilian and a Roman citizen.
‘Sir?’ the man replied with more deference than Fronto had heard him use all year.
‘What is this?’ Fronto took in the rising tent and its workmen with a sweep of his hand.
‘Singulares unit,’ Palmatus replied airily. ‘Told you we were working on it.
‘And I told you to stick it up your arse, didn’t I?’
‘Legate with your record of danger and combat should have a bodyguard,’ Palmatus said dismissively, nodding to Masgava as the latter emerged from the tent, similarly dressed in pale tunic and mail shirt — though his enormous bulk strained the shirt and made it look like a winesack stretched over a ballista.
‘Palmatus, I am not a legate. In fact I’m little more than an observer at the moment. The chance of me actually getting close enough to any action to experience any danger is tiny, so I hardly need a bodyguard. What I’m more in need of is an entertainer to keep me busy. Or a mallet to knock me out and send me to sleep.’
‘Don’t tempt them,’ grinned Antonius. ‘I can see these two complying with your request.’
‘And who are they, anyway?’ Fronto grumbled. ‘Weirdest looking bunch.’
‘Chosen men. Pick of Galronus’ best, along with four veterans of the Tenth who opted for this rather than their honesta missio and a friend of Carbo’s who has been deemed a little over-excitable by his optio. Good men, every one. I’m working on getting the Gauls to cut their hair and shave off their ‘taches, but it’s an uphill job.’
‘Send them back to their units. Even if I wanted a babysitter — which I don’t — Caesar will have nothing of it, even if I’m made legate again. Certainly not before that.’
‘No, wait,’ Antonius grinned. ‘It’s a splendid idea. It’ll give you something to do until your command comes through, putting your little house in order. And until you’re made legate, at least you’ll have your own command.’
Fronto threw an appropriately venomous look at the other officer and cleared his throat. ‘Caesar will not authorise it.’
‘Caesar will do as I advise, and I authorise it. Go ahead, you two, and get your singulares set up. In fact, get another contubernium together too. Eight men is too small for comfort. Just run any transfers by me. And tell Cita to give you what you need. Those Gauls will need kitting out properly.’
Fronto sighed deeply and looked back and forth between the implacable faces of his new bodyguard officers and the second most important man in the army. Shaking his head, he glowered at Palmatus. ‘Get at least a couple of archers from Decius’ auxiliaries attached to the Eighth. And a good engineer, too. Ask around and see if a Gallic legionary called Biorix is here. He was serving with the Thirteenth three years ago, and he could be dead or transferred, but if he’s in one of these legions, get him.’
Antonius grinned. ‘That’s the spirit,’ he laughed. ‘To it, Fronto! Your men need you.’
‘My bed needs me,’ Fronto grumbled.
Palmatus gestured towards the larger of the three tents. ‘It’s in there waiting for you. Leave the rest to us.’
Fronto gave his new command a last disparaging look and with his deepest sigh yet entered his tent, seeking the oblivion of sleep.
Chapter Six
‘We’re certain that we are in their lands?’ Marcus Antonius asked carefully. ‘We could cause ourselves more than a spot of bother if we move in and they turn out to be an allied tribe.’
Caesar watched the scene before him and replied to his friend and subordinate without moving his gaze. ‘They are Nervii. The scouts are natives, so they know these things. And in my gut I know they are. I can almost feel it in my blood. These animals ambushed us four years ago not a great distance from here and we fought hard for our lives. I stood in the line with the dying men that day, covered in the enemy’s blood, sweat and stink. I know the Nervii of old and accord them appropriate loathing.’
Antonius simply nodded, his own gaze playing across the oddly tranquil scene.
Not so for much longer.
The first settlement they had come across in Nervii territory was no city or oppidum. No fortress or druidic site. It was a simple village of poor, dirty and apparently frail farmers and their families. To Antonius — and to Fronto, standing on the periphery of the staff — they did not look capable of ambushing a sheep, let alone a sizeable force of Roman legionaries.
But Fronto knew otherwise.
They may look peaceful and frail, yet they were anything but. These very people may well have been among that force that almost halted the Roman campaign in Belgae lands four years ago. They may be the very men who besieged Cicero a matter of months ago. Yes, they held hoes and rakes, fed pigs and kneaded bread. But give them a rousing anti-Roman speech and in moments they would be wielding any blade they could lay hands upon and charging the hated Roman enemy. The Belgae were, as Caesar had once said, the bravest and the fiercest of all these peoples. Even their farmers were dangerous. Even the women.
The officers watched in silence as the two cohorts began to move in. As soon as the village — a shabby collection of huts that played home to some fifty souls — had been located, Caesar had ordered two cohorts of the Ninth ahead, sweeping to both sides in a wide arc and then moving in like pincers to surround the settlement and pin them against the approaching army.
Panic gripped the natives as the first signs of the two cohorts were seen between the trees and scrub, closing in on the village. A wall of steel and bronze and red wool, rattling, clanking and thumping, with the rhythmic crunch of booted feet in an ever-tightening circle of death, leaving only a single gap which even now was filling with the rest of the approaching army, moving around both sides of the small hillock that played host to the staff officers, like a river around an island.
Native women grabbed their dusty, half-naked children and ran into their huts as though a few handfuls of dried mud and wattle would stop the advance of a determined legion. The men variously grasped whatever offensive items upon which they could lay their hands and gathered in a group, or helped the women and children to ‘safety’, one man actually wasting time releasing a large horse from a corral gate and leading it by the reins to his hut!
Horses were expensive, after all.
‘Come!’ Caesar commanded and applied heels to horse, urging his steed down the gentle incline towards the village, where the panicked and desperate males had now formed up into a small warband of twenty or so, armed with scythes and sickles, shovels, and even the odd real sword here and there.
The Ninth legion’s ranks parted at calls from their centurions, clearing a path for the staff officers to traverse and reach the centre of activity. Caesar and his cadre of officers entered the small settlement, passing between a barn and a small pig pen where the beasts wallowed, grunting and carefree, unaware of the drama unfolding around them.
‘Galronus?’ the general asked, to which the Remi noble, commander of a large auxiliary cavalry wing, stepped his horse forward, falling in near Caesar’s side.
‘Sir?’
‘I will need my words translated to these people, since I doubt they have a word of Latin.’
Galronus nodded respectfully, and the general cleared his throat. With a wave of his hand, he gave a signal and small groups of legionaries detached from their units and began to move towards the various structures.
‘My soldiers will search each of your huts,’ he announced, pausing for Galronus to echo his words in the local drawl.
‘If you wish to see another dawn, you will drop your weapons and gather peacefully in the corral there, offering no resistance. Your women and children will leave their buildings and join you. If they do not leave the huts voluntarily, my men will drag them out, and if they offer continued resistance, they will simply be killed inside the huts. Do I make myself clear?’