A laugh rippled through the desperate defence despite the situation, and Brutus straightened.
“Here we go… One!”
Further up the street, Fronto heard Brutus’ shouted commands and sighed with relief. They might pull themselves out of this after all. Watching the approaching men who had broken from Brutus’ force, he felt a lurch of worry again as he realised how few soldiers his fellow legate had left himself to bar the way to the enemy.
“You men” he addressed the legionaries guarding the windows. “You will hold position until the rearguard reaches you and then fall in and join their line as they pull back.
Pinching his nose, he looked down at the blade hanging from his hand. He’d not even drawn blood yet. Was this what it felt like to be a normal commander? Ordering men around with no personal involvement? Blinking, he refocussed on the large force of soldiers slowing as they reached him. No time to muse on the nature of command now.
“You men come with me. I want you formed into an advancing shield wall. The bulk of the enemy may be behind us, but there could yet be Gauls between us and safety. Someone was trying to burn the gate, after all. Form up and prepare to advance in good order.”
The legionaries, a confused mix of the Seventh and tenth, quickly formed into a column ten men wide, the front line holding their shields up ready to meet any resistance.
“Advance at the steady march.”
With the slow, determined tramp of a marching legion, the column of protected and armed legionaries began to stomp up the road towards the camp. Up here, the houses of the Morini townsfolk — rebels? — petered out with no archers in windows threatening them, and were replaced by small orchards, vegetable gardens, animal pens and patches of waste ground.
Closer they moved until finally the path curved slightly and gave them their first clear view of the fort. Fronto grinned. Rufus had really gone to work on his fortifications. An extra ditch had been dug around the fort, and the joins between it and the new settlement ramparts had been severed and cleared, the ditches extended through them.
The smoke that had appeared to be from an attempted burning of the gate proved instead to be the charring, smouldering remains of the Morini’s attempt at creating a vinea — a protective mobile shelter — that they’d apparently used to cover a battering ram. The ram itself was now a huge, black cinder in the centre of the smoking pile, hissing in the rain.
The fort had held and held well. The amount of churned mud and destruction around the outer ditch and the bodies piled within it suggested that the siege was probably in its second or even third day now.
“Come on, lads. We’re clear” he shouted to the legionaries.
A few figures appeared at the top of the gate, on the parapet. A man with a transverse crest on his helmet, visible in the light of a guttering torch, turned and bellowed out commands. Fronto couldn’t quite hear what the man had said, but the words ‘Roman’ and ‘relief’ were definitely among them.
The fort’s gate began to swing open and the duty centurion and his men issued out in full battle array, looking about as relieved as Fronto had ever seen a man. The advancing force came to a halt and Fronto strode out ahead.
The centurion saluted and grinned. His face was streaked black with soot and dark circles hung under his eyes.
“It’s very good to see you, sir. Can I ask what legions you bring?”
Fronto sheathed his sword and coughed quietly.
“Just four centuries of the Seventh and Tenth returned from Britannia, I’m afraid. We’re not so much a relief force as fellow prisoners.”
The centurion tried to hide his disappointment, his face hardening. “Then it’s good to see you back, sir. Legate Rufus is in the headquarters building. I assume you’ll want to see him straight away?”
“I will. Legate Brutus is on his way up the hill with the rearguard, followed by a sizeable force of Gauls. Get these men fell in with your own and prepared in case they decide the night can stand another attack yet.”
The centurion nodded as Fronto strode in through the gates.
“Legate Rufus sends these with his compliments, sir.”
Fronto turned, taking some care on the slimy timbers of the rampart walkway, to see an optio from the Ninth saluting him, two legionaries behind him carrying a bundle of javelins some twenty-odd in number, bound into a sheaf with leather ties.
“Thank you. I suspect we’ll need them. Looks like they’ll coming back for another try any time now.”
The two soldiers struggled up the ramp to the parapet with their burden and then upended it to rest against the palisade wall, saluting as they caught their breath before turning and jogging back the way they’d come. The junior officer threw out another salute and marched back to his duties.
Geminius, a hard-bitten ginger haired centurion with a flat nose and a hare-lip that showed failed stitch-marks, grinned his ugly grin along the palisade.
“Shall I distribute them, sir.”
“Go ahead.”
Fronto watched Geminius as he began the task. The centurion was one of the two from the Tenth who had disembarked with him last night, the other having fallen foul of a particularly vicious sword wound in the retreat up the street from the port, and currently waiting to greet Hades in person in the makeshift hospital. The wounded centurion’s optio had only been made up in Britannia and was, as yet, not ready to take full command and so Geminius had combined the survivors of the two centuries into one outsized unit that had been given the northeast sector of wall.
“Lounging about again?”
Fronto turned at Priscus’ voice, too tired to anger — he’d found that since his explosion of untamed rage in Britannia anger was slow to come and less common, or possibly he was deliberately making it so. He’d had less than an hour’s sleep since leaving Britannia and the fatigue was beginning to wear him down. The rain had stopped at dawn to the great relief of the men, clearing the sky and bringing a cold wind and pale sun that totally failed to dry up any of the standing water. For the thousandth time, Fronto wished he was in Puteoli with a bunch of grapes and the timetable for the races. It seemed so far away in both distance and probability.
“Haven’t you got to be annoying somewhere else, Gnaeus?”
“I am free of duties for a grand total of twenty minutes in order to halt my steady descent into starvation.”
The prefect produced a cloth-wrapped bundle and opened it to reveal two small loaves of freshly-baked bread, half a cheese, and a small bowl of meat chunks the origin of which Fronto was not about to question. It was common knowledge that cheese was in ridiculously short supply and that meat had run out before they had even arrived.
“I hope you shaved the rat first.”
Ignoring the meat, he gratefully tore off a piece of bread and a chunk of cheese, only realising as he bit down on them how hungry he was and how much his stomach was growling.
“All quiet?” Priscus enquired lightly
“Sort of…”
The Morini had given them a period of grace after the column had reached the fort, pulling back out of range of the walls to change tactic. The new arrivals had had little time to rest, though. After an hour’s meeting with Rufus, Brutus and Priscus, Fronto had managed maybe forty-five minutes of shut-eye before the alarm sounded and the army rushed to the defences to prepare for the next onslaught. Rufus had explained unhappily that this routine had been going on now for days, the locals never giving them more than four or five hours of rest.
“They’re not going to rest until they have the fort.”
Fronto shook his head. “They know there are still several Roman legions out there, as well as the cavalry. It’s a matter of time. They need to wipe out this garrison and then disappear into the woods before another army appears. I can see what they’re planning; I just can’t see why they’ve gone this far. I just can’t figure what triggered it?”