Fronto frowned and glanced back and forth between the two men. For a moment some of his earlier fears for the two centurions returned. They were clearly hiding something, but he knew now from experience that with these two, confrontation over anything was hardly likely to be productive.
It was another added worry, though. In a brief flash he remembered Caesar’s face as they stood talking on the rampart of the nearby camp around a fortnight ago, the general wearing a look of guilty secretiveness as he neatly evaded and parried all Fronto’s more important questions.
“This whole thing is pissing me off. All this politics.”
“Then concentrate on what’s important.”
“Getting home” Fronto said flatly, and then clenched his teeth. “And dealing with Hortius and Menenius.”
“What?” Furius said, frowning.
“The two tribunes from the Fourteenth. I’m pretty sure they’re the ones who’ve been murdering Caesar’s supporters. Your legate thinks I’m wrong. He says they’re too loyal to Caesar for that. But I’m still convinced.”
Fabius stood up and pulled his stool round so that he was sitting in front of the other two, creating an almost conspiratorial huddle.
“Then you must find a way to be sure, legate; draw them out and extract a confession. Who are the injured parties again? We are not tied to you and may be able to unearth facts that you cannot.”
Fronto pursed his lips. “Caesar’s nephew — You remember him from Ostia? He was killed at Vienna on the journey north. Pugio strike to the heart from behind. Then there was Tetricus, my tribune. Took both pugio and pilum blows at the battle in the Germanic camp, and was then finished with a gladius blow in the hospital. Pleuratus, Caesar’s personal courier. Drowned in the Rhenus, tied to a boulder. And they tried to take me out with a slingshot, too.”
“And that’s all?”
“All I know of. There may well be more. Given the number of casualties on a campaign like this there could be a dozen more deaths that have gone unnoticed.”
Fabius nodded. “Then let us pry into the matter, too. And when we return to Gaul and you confront them, you may call upon us to aid you if you wish. I can assure you that we are very capable in such a situation.”
“I’m not yet sure what I’ll do, but I’ll let you know when I decide. On the assumption we make it back across, that is.”
Across the beach, they all watched the ships bucking and diving amid the rolling waves.
“Fronto! Get over here and help me hold this thing steady!”
The legate of the Tenth, ashen faced and shaking like a leaf, wrenched his head around, peering into the driving rain, trying to identify the source of the voice. It took only a moment to recognise Brutus, grasping the steering oar of the trireme and desperately straining to hold it in position. Taking a quick glance over the side at the rhythmic rise and fall of the oars, Fronto quickly wished he hadn’t and pulled away from the rail, though his whitened fingers appeared reluctant to let go.
“Fronto!” Brutus bellowed again.
The legate looked up at the boiling black and purple sky, lit by occasional sheets of blinding white that cast the entire fleet into an eerie stark monochrome. A fresh flash of lightning temporarily blinded him and he shook his head, blinking away yellow-green blobs until he could see the huge, frightening waves rising and falling again.
“For the love of Venus, Fronto, I can’t hold it on my own!”
Another quick glance told him that Brutus was not exaggerating. The swinging steering oar was sliding sideways and despite all Brutus’ efforts, his boots’ nails were leaving score marks across the timber as he was steadily pushed away.
He quickly glanced about to see whether anyone else could help, but every man on board had his tasks, most of them rowing or trying to hold pieces of the ship together.
He could have been on one of the big Gallic ships, but he’d decided to risk a trireme just to avoid being closeted with anyone that would either annoy him or bother him. He was regretting his decision about now, only three or four miles from their destination and yet caught in a storm the likes of which could easily dash them to pieces.
“Pissing Caesar” he snarled as he let go of the rail with some difficulty and staggered along the boards, slipping left and right with the lurching of the ship and the wet timber. “He could have left earlier and not bothered with the damn hostages.”
Brutus had his teeth gritted in the gale, pushing the steering oar with all his might. Some five feet from him, the trierarch who actually captained the ship lay sprawled against the rail, blood washing down from his head in torrents as Florus — the young capsarius from the Tenth who had treated Fronto more times than he cared to remember — busily tried to mend a too-large hole in the man’s head caused by a splintered oar that had snapped and shot upwards, catching the commander a blow on the way past.
Staggering across the deck, Fronto fell in with Brutus, grasping the steering oar and pushing it straight once more, trying not to pay too much attention to the sight of a wave that suddenly reared up higher than the ship’s rail.
“Thank you” the young legate yelled. “We were veering towards that!”
Fronto glanced off to the side, where he could make out nothing in the roiling blackness until another sudden flash lit up a rearing spur of land, menacing and pale grey in the light.
“Maybe we should! Can we not land there? Beach the ship?”
Brutus shook his head. “Rocks. Too many rocks. We wouldn’t so much beach it as sink it. We have to press on for Gesoriacum. We’re nearly there!”
Fronto reached up to brush the plastered hair from his forehead and then quickly slapped the hand back to the beam as it began to move again. Five miles might as well be fifty as far as he was concerned.
Despite missing the morning tide due to trouble loading the nervous native horses, Caesar had persevered, pushing the fleet to prepare for the evening tide. They’d managed most of the crossing in reasonable weather — driving rain had now become so commonplace as to be considered reasonable. But then, as the sailors were beginning to feel happier at the approach of the Gaulish coast, the storm had broken.
The fleet, having been fairly close throughout the journey, was now scattered by the wrath of Neptune, and no sign of any other vessel had been noted for more than half an hour now.
“We’ll be damn lucky if we hit the right bloody nation, let alone the right port!” yelled Fronto, eying the coastline with distaste.
“It’s alright, Fronto. This is the land of the Morini. I’ve done extensive charting and research, and I remember these cliffs from our first sailing. Not many more minutes and we’ll see the lights of Gesoriacum.”
“Not many more minutes and we’ll be pinned to the seabed under a hundred tons of timber” grumbled Fronto.
“Help me!”
The two men turned at the sudden panicked call, to see Florus the capsarius desperately trying to hold down the figure of the ship’s captain who was bucking and shaking.
Fronto looked back at Brutus helplessly.
“Go on. I can hold it for a minute now, but don’t be long.”
Nodding, Fronto gingerly let go of the steering oar and, once he was certain that Brutus still had it, skittered across the deck to the site of medical aid. As he dropped to wobbly knees next to the two, he felt his gorge rise and had to swallow down the bile. What looked like a simple head wound with a lot of blood through the rain and distance was considerably more unpleasant up close. A large piece of the trierarch’s skull was missing at the crown and through the white-fringed bloody hole, Fronto could clearly see the pulsing grey mass of the man’s brain, leaking blood. The bile rose again and had to be swallowed back.