Yawning, he stood and stretched, crossing to the tent flap, his bare feet cold on the rush mat that served as a floor and kept away the worst of the moisture. It was only as he neared the doorway, fastened with ties, that he became aware of another noise behind the constant hammering of the rain.
Shouting.
Panicked shouting.
Fronto felt his pulse quicken. Battle? Had the Britons come again? No. It couldn’t be that. He’d heard the multitude of horns blowing the first watch, but no call to arms or any such message. So what was going on?
Quickly, he undid three of the door ties and ducked out into the pale, unpleasant dawn. The sun was barely up and the morning still had a faint purple look to it. Men were rushing around the camp, their centurions bellowing, the optios hurrying the men along with an occasional wallop of their stick. The sheets of diagonal rain were so heavy and fast that it was difficult to see more than half a dozen tents away through the camp.
Aware that he was already getting drenched with only his top half poking out of the tent, Fronto spotted the transverse crest of a centurion and shouted at him, waving an arm. The man, commander of one of the centuries in the fifth cohort if Fronto remembered correctly, hurried over as soon as he heard the yelling above the insistent rain.
“What’s happening?”
“It’s the ships, sir.”
“What about them?”
“They’re sinking, sir.”
“Piss!”
The centurion paused for only a moment after Fronto disappeared inside again, dropping the tent flap, and then turned and ran on, back to his business. Inside, Fronto hurriedly pulled on his socks — doubling them over and wishing they weren’t still cold and soggy from the previous day — and slipped on his soft leather boots, noting with irritation the discolouration where the expensive leather had been ruined by the water. No matter how many times he’d intended to speak to Cita about new boots, for some reason he’d never got round to it. Damn Lucilia and her need to rearrange him! His old boots would have kept him nice and dry.
Deciding against armour, he quickly threw his baldric over his shoulder, letting the gladius fall into place at his side, and grabbed his cloak, wincing at the chilly dampness of the wet wool. Choosing not to enfold himself too tightly in the unpleasant garment, he held it over his head to shield the worst of the downpour and, taking a deep breath, ducked through the entrance again and out into the pelting rain.
Now, parties of men had been organised, running down toward the beach and the landing site with tools or carrying armfuls of pre-planed timber. Having crossed the water with only the lightest of supplies, there were far fewer tools and nails among the legions than would normally be the case.
Centurions were yelling at their men and Fronto spotted Brutus in the downpour also making for the beach.
“Trouble with the ships?”
Brutus glanced around in the rain, finally recognising the figure of Fronto cowled beneath the sodden cloak. The young legate of the Eighth shook the excess water from his hair and ran a hand down his face and neck in a futile attempt to dry them a little.
“So I hear. Come on.”
The two officers jogged down the grassy path toward the beach, out through the gate of the twin-legion fort that had been constructed, across the short no-man’s land, and then in through the separate fortified enclosure that surrounded the fleet’s landing site.
Such was the limited visibility in the torrents of water that it was not until they had reached the pebbled surface of the beach that the two men began to make out the shadowy bulks of the ships protruding from the seething waters. Legionaries were hard at work, waist deep in the sea, while centurions and optios bellowed orders from the beach. A contubernium of eight men held a huge leather sheet up as a shelter while others crouched beneath with tinder, kindling and the least soaked wood they could find, totally failing to start a fire over which they could melt tar for the caulking of seams.
It took Fronto only a moment to spot Furius and Fabius standing close together on the shingle. The former was bellowing at a soldier so loudly and so close that it looked as though the legionary might fall over under the blast of abuse. Fabius was frowning and scratching his head. As Fronto gestured to Brutus and strode over to them, the legionary scurried off to correct whatever he’d done.
“What’s happening?”
The centurions looked up in unison and saluted the two senior officers.
“Problems with the ships.”
“Like what?”
“All sorts. A lot of those Gallic ships that hit ground first have sprung a few leaks. They must have been damaged when they hit, but we’ve only found out about it now because the storm’s wrenched them free and they’ve started to fill with water.” Furius shook his head in exasperation. “Should have seen that coming.”
Fabius pointed out to the north and Fronto could just make out a mess that looked like a ship-collision. “Several of the triremes were also damaged in the storm. They were ripped free of their anchors and smashed into each other.”
Brutus pinched the bridge of his nose. “Sounds like a disaster. Will we salvage everything?”
“Too soon to tell yet, sir. Maybe half the ships in total are letting in water to some extent, though some are worse than others, of course. We’re working to secure the better ones first in case we have to cut our losses.”
“Bloody wonderful” Fronto raged. “That’s our ride home compromised. I’m really beginning to side with Cicero on this. The man might be defying Caesar at every turn but on this matter, I think he’s right. This entire campaign was a fool’s errand.”
Brutus turned to his fellow legate. “How cramped would you say we were on the way over?”
“I wouldn’t have wanted many more on our ship…” he caught Brutus’ serious and worried gaze and thought hard. “Space-wise we could probably fit half as many again, though it would be very cramped.”
Brutus nodded. “I was picturing a similar figure. And we can bear in mind that on the return journey we won’t be carrying the supplies we did on the way here. Also, and I know it sounds callous, but we lost about sixty men in the landing. That’s almost half a ship’s worth of passengers. So by my reckoning we could just about manage to ship the whole army back with two thirds of the vessels.”
“I suppose so” Fronto admitted unhappily, remembering the unpleasant crossing and trying to imagine how it would feel with crowded conditions added. “Don’t like it, though.”
“Would you prefer to winter in Britannia?”
“Shit, no. I’ll swim back if I have to.”
Brutus cast a glance up and down the beach, trying to take stock of the grey bulks rising from the waves, some of which were clearly moving far too freely for comfort. Wiping the dripping water from the end of his nose, he turned to the two centurions.
“Find Marcinus. He’s a centurion in your legion who served with Pompey against the pirates. I’ve spoken to him and he’s got a remarkable grasp of naval matters. Get him to survey the ships as quickly as he can with some help and separate out those that can be saved and those that can’t. Then get to work tearing apart those that are lost and use their timbers, pegs and caulking to repair the rest. It’ll be ten times as fast as cutting and planing the timber to fit and manufacturing the caulk. We sacrifice the bad to save the good, like a surgeon.”
Furius and Fabius saluted and turned to go about the work as the young legate smiled at Fronto, rubbing the back of his neck and shuddering at the cold rivulets of water running down inside his tunic.
“That ought to save enough to carry the army at a push.”
Fronto nodded unhappily, unable to shake the image of two hundred men pressed almost back to back in a small vessel among the buffeting waves — horrible.