He suddenly stopped and tapped his temple.
“That means I’ll need some good engineers.”
Fronto smiled.
“I can provide them for you.”
“Good. And, of course, there’ll be prisoners to guard and booty to transport. To be honest, I think three thousand men’s stretching things a little thin.”
The group went silent again.
“How long til the legions have cleared away the bodies and buried everyone?”
Fronto shrugged and almost bit through his tongue at the horrifying pain in his arm.
“A few more hours. My lads are moving through the Roman dead like a swarm of locusts, looking for our training centurion.”
Sabinus raised an eyebrow.
“Velius?”
Fronto nodded. Not been seen since we pushed into the Atrebates. I suspect he’ll be found shortly.
“Sad.”
The officers all lowered their gaze and eventually Labienus sighed and took a deep breath.
“Very well. Prisoners. How many have we taken today, and how many do we have in total?”
Crispus stepped forward from where he’d been hovering on the periphery.
“I’m not at all sure how many we had originally. The moment we left Samarobriva, Caesar had the walking wounded and some of the Gallic levies escort the prisoners back to Vesontio. I expect they are already on the way to the slave markets in Rome.”
Labienus nodded.
“So now?”
“Now we have around six and a half thousand prisoners; a mixture of Viromandui, Atrebates and Nervii. Mostly Viromandui, though, since the others fought almost to extinction. Varus captured the command party, by the looks of it. He found the head man of the Nervii trying to sneak away through the woods along with some of his warriors.”
Labienus laughed.
“Good. That should lend some weight to our demands when we get to Nemetocenna.”
Fronto cleared his throat.
“Be prepared to carry out the peace on your own while Caesar carries out the war. I’ve seen the maps and I know these Belgae and their sieges. I can’t see a chance in hell of the general being back before at least the nones of September, if not the ides.”
Labienus smiled.
“Then I’ll have to delegate some of it to you.”
“Me?” Fronto shook his head.
“Yes, you. You’re wounded and with only one working arm. You get to go with us.”
Fronto grinned.
“If you think for one minute a broken arm is keeping me out of battle to sit and be talked to death by dozens of native chieftains, you've got another thing coming!"
* * * * *
Fronto stood impatiently watching his tent being erected. His furniture, such as it was, lay close by, waiting to be positioned inside. He’d stopped them removing it all from the cart, though. Just the cot and a chair. It was hardly worth moving any more since the whole army would be departing at first light in one direction or the other and everything would have to be taken down and stowed in around ten hours.
Sabinus, given the task of overseeing the camp’s creation in the absence of the trained and experienced camp prefect Paetus, strode across the open ground and watched with interest as the leather tent panels were fastened together and stretched across the wooden frame.
“Fascinating, isn’t it?”
Fronto turned and raised an eyebrow. He realised he was absent-mindedly rubbing his bad arm again. How the hell could he not even waggle it slightly? It was obviously still alive, or it wouldn’t hurt so bloody much.
“What?”
“Watching the men setting camp. I’ve never really spent a lot of time watching it, but it’s such a smooth, regimented system. Paetus has got the procedure drilled so heavily into the heads of the men that I’m not really doing anything useful. Just watching.”
Fronto grumbled.
“You need to be careful saying things like that. In this army, that kind of comment could land you the job permanently.”
“You’re a ray of sunshine as usual, Marcus.”
Another grumble.
“I have this horrible feeling…”
Sabinus frowned.
“Not sure I like the sound of that. You had a bad feeling about this and we lost half the damned army.”
The legate nodded.
“I’m torn. There’s very little I can think of that I’d less rather do that go with Labienus and set up political allegiances and make deals and pacts. But on the other hand, Nemesis is making my head itch. There’s something looming and I think it’s got something to do with the Aduatuci.”
Sabinus laughed, though Fronto detected a definite edge to it.
“You’re a practical man, Fronto. You always have been. Don’t tell me you’re turning into some sort of haruspex?”
Fronto laughed, but noted that subtly, at waist level, Sabinus had made the sign to ward off evil. He opened his mouth to say something suitably disparaging, but clamped it shut again as a voice from behind called his name. He turned to see Balbus hurrying up the slope alongside Priscus.
“What’s important enough to make you two run?”
Balbus heaved down air, his face rosy, and Priscus took a deep breath. Something about his expression set the legate very much on edge.
“You need to come see this, Fronto.”
Sabinus blinked. While it was generally understood and accepted that Fronto and his Primus Pilus had a somewhat informal relationship, to address his commander in such a fashion in front of two more senior officers was something of a breech of etiquette. What had Priscus so riled that he forgot entirely about propriety?
Fronto’s brow furrowed.
“Tell me.”
"They've found Velius. I wasn't kidding… you need to see it."
“It?” Suddenly Fronto was running in the direction from which the centurion had come, the other three hot on his heels. “Where?”
Priscus, quickly catching up, pointed off toward the woods to the west.
“How the hell did he get there? He must have fallen in the midst of the Atrebates, like I did.”
There was no answer from the primus pilus, but he picked up speed and jogged out ahead to lead the way. Sabinus and Balbus caught up with Fronto and the three men, in varying states of exhaustion, ran on after the centurion.
The way through the woods was easy. Fronto hadn’t ventured to them since the battle’s end, but was aware that they had harboured a sizeable part of the Belgic army prior to the fight. There was hardly any undergrowth left, and what there was had been trampled flat.
Indeed, as the four men passed under the eaves, Fronto became aware of just how many men must have hidden here behind their wicker screens covered in leaves, preventing them from being seen by the Roman army on the slope. And not all of the footprints he could identify, some bare-footed, some in Celtic boots and other in caligae, were heading to the battlefield. There were a number of tracks that told the story of the survivors of the Atrebates and the Nervii who had fled into these woods and picked their way quietly through them. Probably some escaped to run home to their families, but others fell foul of Varus’ men at the wood’s western edge and were now in chains.
Suddenly he became aware of conversation. Peering between the trees and plants, he spotted around a dozen legionaries with an optio in a small clearing. Priscus was making straight for them.
The legate found, as he stepped from the deeper wood into the clearing, that his pulse had quickened and there was an uncomfortable lump in his throat. During the hours of waiting while the men searched through and retrieved all of the Roman bodies on the battlefield, Fronto had, sadly and slowly, begun to come to terms with the idea that Velius had gone. It seemed impossible when he thought about that grizzled face; the man had always seemed near indestructible but, realistically, it was actually astounding that only one of the three of them had died, given the suicidally reckless action they had undertaken.