There was a long pause as the barbarians conferred again and Fronto watched them, curiously. Something was very odd about all of this. The man’s Latin was not wonderful, for sure, but he knew words like ‘ancestor’ and could form, admittedly broken, sentences. They should not be having so much trouble understanding the general’s words.
Frowning, he wondered why they appeared to be labouring over this more than need be.
“Caesar — you give three day. We deliver term and come with reply. Good, yes?”
Fronto frowned. Three days now too? He wished there were some way to speak to the general alone. Suspicions were forming like dark clouds around his brain and he felt a storm coming. A flash of inspiration struck him and he dug deep into his mind for the words.
“I expect they will have great trouble understanding this” he said loudly to the General, in rusty Greek.
Caesar turned to frown at him and then, seeing the urgent look on his face, turned back to the small group. A new sense of worry and confusion had fallen on them, as though everything that had happened had been their own plan, but this new and incomprehensible development was a serious problem.
“I didn’t even realise you knew the tongue, Marcus,” Caesar replied in fluent Greek with a marked Illyrian accent. “Go on. I think we’re mentally alone.”
“Caesar” Fronto said, again in Greek, “they’re just trying to delay us all. I don’t know what their game is but they’ve been deliberately faffing and now they’re asking for more time.”
Caesar nodded, wrinkling his lip.
“I fear they are trying to buy time to bring home the huge amount of horse I understand they sent raiding to the south a few days ago. Without them, they will be at a disadvantage against us.”
“Would that it were that, Caesar, but I think it’s more important than that. The Ubii at least are supposed to be reasonably civilized, or so Galronus said. They trade with Rome. If they were going to send ambassadors, they would be noblemen with fluent Latin, dressed like rich men and would act like them.”
Caesar frowned.
“Not ambassadors?”
Fronto shook his head. “I think what they are is decoys, sent to keep the bulk of the army busy. Something’s about to happen, or it’s happening already.”
Caesar nodded slowly, a worried shadow in his eyes. Turning to Varus’ cavalry, he scanned the ranks until he spotted the commander himself.
“Varus. Take some good men and ride for Piso’s vanguard. Make sure all is as it should be and order them to pull back to the main column.”
Varus saluted and started shouting out orders, but Fronto saw a few snarling lips and wrinkling brows among the enemy. Caesar had switched back to Latin to give the order. In seconds, as Fronto drew breath to get Caesar’s attention, the Germanic riders were already turning and racing off down the far side of the hill.
“Caesar!”
The general glanced at the sudden explosion of movement and nodded.
“Let them go. I won’t push any more men out from the column to catch them. They’re too light and fast; they’ll easily outrun our heavy-equipped cavalry.”
As Varus trotted past the group of officers, a turma of regular cavalry forming up behind him, Fronto reached past and tapped him on the arm.
“If you value the cavalry, ride like Pegasus himself and get Piso and his men back here.”
Somewhere away to the northeast a single flash of lightning rent the sky.
“Great” Fronto muttered as his left hand rose involuntarily to the Fortuna pendant.
Chapter 5
(Border of Treveri amp; Ubii lands close to the Rhine amp; Moselle Rivers)
Varus and his turma of cavalry raced up the gentle incline across open swathes of grass between the forested low hills that covered the landscape here, hiding fertile valleys and the ruined shells of small, peaceful settlements that had fallen victim to the Germanic invaders.
The small force had paused at one, despite the urgency of their mission, to confirm their worst fears. Varus very much wished he hadn’t entered the hut and seen what the Tencteri raiders had done to the Belgic farmer and his wife and daughters, almost certainly both before and after their deaths. Since that first encounter, they had warily avoided stopping at any of the other two dozen villages and isolated farmsteads they had passed.
Half an hour they had been riding now, the last ten minutes of which they had followed the unmistakable trail left by Piso’s cavalry wing, some five thousand men and mounts.
Across the low saddle they rode, almost three dozen men pounding the earth in their haste to reach the vanguard as fast as possible. Crossing easily into a wide, shallow depression surrounded by forested hillocks and ridges, they espied a deeper and narrower valley across to the west, flattening where it met the river to the east.
Full of milling horsemen.
Piso’s cavalry had come to a halt in the valley. Their direction of travel so far, following the northeasterly course set by the general, would lead them directly over the highest hills ahead, with the deepest, most tangled forests. Since clearly the army could not pass that way, the cavalry commander had paused, sending scout units out to locate the best route, whether it be along the MosellaRiver or further up the valley. Varus nodded as he slowed his mount at the crest. He’d have done exactly the same. Of the force of five thousand cavalry, perhaps three thousand remained in the centre of the wide valley, the rest split into units of three hundred, each under its own officers, dispersed around the valley, probing each low saddle or side valley for the best route onwards.
At least they were intact. Nothing untoward had befallen them.
“Sir!”
Varus turned to the man who’d addressed him, a regular cavalryman, holding his shield and reins in one hand, while jabbing his spear out toward the valley.
“Hmm?”
“I saw movement on the hill opposite. Above the tree line.”
Varus didn’t even bother to look. His men were good. The first turma in his command was made up of veterans, each of whom had served since the first push against the Helvetii, and many even in Hispania before that. Each man in this small unit knew Gaul backwards and inside out now. Each one of them was as alert and trustworthy as a soldier could be. If Afranius said there was movement, then there was movement.
And the Roman forces in the valley were scattered over more than a mile of open land in small groups.
“Form up!” Varus bellowed, already kicking his bay mare into activity and urging her down the slope into the wide depression.
By the time he’d picked up to a canter and then a gallop, the turma had formed on him and kept to a tight knot as they descended toward the large force of auxiliary cavalry — Gauls, Belgae, Aquitanians, and the occasional Roman officer amid the spread-out mass.
By the time they were half way down the valley side, Piso and his officers had spotted them, a standard bearer gesturing in their direction with his silver wolf standard, other men pointing and many horses turning to face them.
Varus’ gaze took them all in, and then rose above them, tracking across the fields and past the burned shell of a small farm, to the tree line opposite, from which shapes were now detaching. Enemy cavalry; lightly armed and clothed men — a number of them naked he assumed from the fleshy tint — were leaving the shadows of the wood and pouring down the hillsides toward the large force.
A quick glance showed the same thing happening up and down the valley. There were not a vast number of enemy riders, but they had been well positioned in groups, each small force falling upon one section of the separated Roman cavalry.