Sons of Taranis (6 page)

He looked across at the spindly figure in the polished bronze cuirass in time to catch Hirtius giving him an appraising look. He tried not to glower in reply. He failed. Urging his steed forward, Varus blinked irritably as his face was spattered with a fresh dose of wind-borne sleet.

Unlike Laniocon, this fortress exhibited no strong defensive ditch and consequently Varus had a continuous view of the action ahead at the crest of the hill, over the serried ranks of the Eleventh. It was clearly a truly one-sided engagement, the legions reaching the ramparts with few casualties, most of their difficulties coming in the form of churned mud underfoot rather than sharpened iron and bronze ahead. Soldiers slid and slipped, struggling to remain upright, but beyond that the siege was very much a foregone conclusion. As Varus watched, the ladders went up among the front ranks. For all the poor defence of this place, the walls were considerably higher than the previous settlement, and the testudo trick would be inadequate to reach the top. Consequently, rather than spend days on end constructing vineae and siege towers, the commanders had had their men cut and construct siege ladders. Looking at the pitiful resistance, the decision had been a good one. Nothing else would be needed. The missiles stopped coming as the few men on the walls were forced to concentrate on the myriad ladders clunking against the stonework instead. Warriors pushed them back with forked sticks, sending the climbing legionaries tumbling back down among their own ranks, and for a moment it seemed the advance might falter.

But there were simply too few defenders, and the Romans were well-prepared and determined. More and more ladders clunked against stone, while the men on the walls had to run ever more desperately to keep them back. Finally the first legionary reached the parapet with glee, vaulting over the top and laying into the men running at him with their forked sticks. The unfortunate victorious legionary went down under a pile of four natives, stabbing and jabbing with their sharpened staves, but by that time another three legionaries were over the top, many more following close on their heels. The fight was over before it began, and within half a dozen heartbeats the only figures visible on the walls were Roman, forcing the few remaining defenders back down into the town. Barely one cohort of the legion had seen any action when the call went up and the oppidum’s gate opened, admitting the Eleventh en-masse.

The gap between the rear ranks of the Eleventh and the following alae of horse opened up as the legion surged forward, pushing through the gate and into the heart of Argatomagon. Tapping his heels on his horse’s flanks, Varus moved forth at an increased rate, the rest of the cavalry with him, as well as Hirtius on his pale grey, ghostlike steed.

In moments the horsemen had reached the top of the slope and slowed as legionaries funnelled through the gate in the ramparts while their compatriots continued to swarm up the ladders and over the top. Varus watched Hirtius with interest as the general’s secretary sat impatient, clearly itching to get through the gate and into the oppidum. What was going on? Quietly, Varus called over one of his decurions.

‘Sir?’

‘I don’t expect much trouble from the Eleventh. They’ve had the speech enough times, but take the other two units and split up, keep things under control, anyway. I’m going to stay with commander Hirtius.’

The decurion slipped away, disseminating the orders, and Varus manoeuvred his steed closer to the staff officer who was almost riding into the rear ranks of the infantry in his impatience to be in. Half a hundred heartbeats later the cavalry were pouring through the gate in the wake of the soldiers who disappeared among the houses, securing every part of the oppidum. Hirtius rode into the centre of the open space, clearly taken by surprise by the lack of surrendering Gauls. The gathering area behind the gate was empty barring a few corpses and a legionary groaning as he clutched a broken leg.

Varus cleared his throat. ‘What now?’

Hirtius either heard nothing or feigned such, ignoring him, since he wheeled his horse and set his sights on an old native, who stood by the door of a hovel, his hands raised in surrender.

‘You!’ the staff officer shouted, causing the old man to jump nervously and rush out a response in his own tongue. ‘Do you have no Latin?’ Hirtius demanded, which simply raised a look of utter bafflement from the man. Varus was about to chime in when a younger Gaul appeared from the doorway, hobbling and using a crutch.

‘I talk bit Roman,’ the new arrival said.

‘Where are the rebel leaders?’ Hirtius demanded of the younger man.

‘Not know, sir. Some rebel in town. Some dead. Other gone.’

The staff officer bridled. ‘This town is the centre of the Biturige rebels. I want to know where those rebels’ leaders
are
.’

‘Hirtius,’ Varus said quietly, ‘I don’t think they’re here. Maybe they
were
, but they’re certainly not now. Look how easy it was to overrun the place.’

Hirtius flashed him a look that only deepened his concern, for in that gaze was a determination, but also a faintly sickened look, as though the officer was fighting his own spirit.

‘By direct order of Gaius Julius Caesar, Proconsul of Gaul, I demand that the rebel leaders be delivered to us, and if they are not located and brought forth, every man of property and of fighting age in this settlement will be roped and chained and taken forth in recompense for the rebellious nature of this tribe.’

Varus narrowed his eyes. That was clearly Caesar speaking through Hirtius, and the general never did anything offhand. What could be gained by such an action? There were no rebel leaders here, just a few last desperate warriors and a city full of ordinary folk. The younger Gaul was explaining this in a desperate tone to the old man, who looked stunned. He then turned back to the two Roman officers.

‘Sir, my father and I are simply merchants, plying our trade in good Biturige metalwork. We are not rebels. We are loyal to the proconsul.’

Again, Varus caught the slightly sickened look in Hirtius’ eyes, and his own widened.

‘Is
that
what this is about, Hirtius?’

The staff officer turned to him.

‘Keep your nose out of this, Varus. The horse are your concern, not the general’s strategy.’

Varus slapped his head. ‘I
thought
the name of this place was familiar. Never misses a trick, our general, does he? I wonder if there were
ever
any rebel leaders here.’

Hirtius gave him that mixed, unpleasant glare again, and Varus issued a snarl and wheeled his horse, trotting out of the gate and back down the slope. It took him only a short while to locate Brutus, who was sitting under a shade that was already starting to sag from the weight of the tiny hailstones gathered atop it. The young officer was poring over a map of the territory while swigging water from a canteen. Varus reined in and dismounted, tying his horse to one of the posts.

‘You spend more time in staff briefings than me, Brutus. Did you know about this?’

Brutus frowned in incomprehension, and Varus indicated the oppidum of Argatomagon with a sweep of his arm. ‘This whole charade. Heart of the rebellion my arse. I’d say there were fewer rebels here than in any other place we’ve put down this month.’

Brutus shrugged. ‘Perhaps they fled the oppidum? They have to have had plenty of warning of our approach, and the rest of their territory fell so easily. Maybe they were just sensible and ran into the wilds to preserve themselves. Doesn’t matter now anyway. The Biturige lands are back in loyalist hands, and there’ll be no further rebellion here.’

‘Brutus, there were never any rebel leaders here, I’d wager my family name on that. This is all about Caesar feathering his nest.’

Brutus frowned and gestured for him to go on, so Varus took the other campaign chair and unclasped his wet cloak, shaking it out and folding it.

‘Caesar’s enslaving the bulk of the populace, claiming that they’ve withheld the details of the rebel leaders. Another thousand slaves or two will be heading for Massilia and Rome in the morning.’

Again Brutus shrugged. ‘That’s the way of war. The beaten are enslaved. And those slaves till the fields and mine the stone for Rome. Don’t get too sentimental, Varus. This is still a war until the last rebel surrenders.’

‘But these are not rebels, Brutus. These are loyalists – just merchants and farmers and metalworkers. These are the same people as sought our help against the rebels in the first place. Enslaving them actually endangers the peace rather than securing it. If news of this reaches other allied tribes, we could find them turning against us. So we’ll have to maintain Caesar’s fiction if we want to keep the Pax Romana. Hirtius was not happy about doing it; I could see that in his eyes.’

Brutus offered the cavalryman his flask and when declined, stoppered it and put it away. ‘Why would Caesar do that just for a few thousand slaves, given how many he’s already taken?’

Varus leaned forward and examined the map closely. After a moment he sat back and tapped with his finger in a small cluster of places around their current location.

‘What are those?’

‘Mining settlements,’ Brutus replied with a frown.

‘And they belong to this oppidum.’

‘There are plenty of iron and copper mining communities in easier places.’

‘Brutus, these are silver mines, I reckon. Or if not, this is a place where silver is worked. Took me a while to realise it, but I wondered why I recognised the name of the place. Argatomagon. Argat is a regional corruption. I’ve heard it as Argad and Argant and even Arganto. It means
silver
. Argatomagon – ‘silver market.’ Damn it, it’s surprisingly close to the Latin, and the soldiers are already calling the place Argentomagus in our own tongue. The place has made its name through silver.’

‘Seems a little…’ Brutus paused. ‘You’re right, though, aren’t you? This place was identified as the centre of the rebellion because that’s where Caesar wanted it to be. Then we can secure silver and worked metals. There’ll be a small fortune at stake here. By raising rebellion, the idiot Bituriges have enriched the general by a heavy margin.’

Varus sagged. ‘If I were a cynical man, I might even be given to wonder whether this entire rebellion was fostered as an excuse to wrest the mines from the Bituriges.’

‘Don’t even think of saying that again, even here and to me. Men with those kind of opinions have a very short career expectancy in the proconsul’s command. I see what you’re saying, and it all smacks very heavily of the same kind of manoeuvring that led Caesar to drive the Helvetii into Gaul eight years ago and start this whole thing in the first place. But the fact remains that it’s done and no good at all will come of speculating in public.’

He sighed. ‘Besides, you know the score here. Caesar has to completely pacify the place within the year before he returns for his consulship. He will need to take every sestertius he can out of this place if he wants to stand a chance of power against Pompey back in Rome. Caesar has plenty of friends in the city, but Pompey currently has all the real influence. The general will need to buy the goodwill of half the senators in Rome to get anywhere.’

‘And he will have to pay the honesta missio for his disbanding legions,’ Varus added.

‘Precisely. Settling the men in southern Gaul will cost a lot of money.’

‘Well,’ Varus stretched and rolled his head, listening to the clicks in his neck, ‘the Bituriges are back under Rome’s wing now. But there are more rebellious tribes than them. We need to keep our eyes open for trouble in the north, I reckon. The Belgae are overdue a grumble.’

Brutus chuckled. ‘You are such an optimist, Varus. It’s almost like having Fronto back in camp. You’ll be grumbling about women and getting soaked in wine next.’

‘Now that’s the best idea I’ve heard all week. Come on. Let’s go open an amphora and toast the Bituriges, unwitting bankers of Caesar’s career.’

FRONTO staggered from the doorway of the bath suite, his bare toes knuckling at the feel of the cold marble now he had moved out of the balneum with its heated floors. Massilia was still in the cold grip of winter and although it was more temperate down here on the southern coast than far to the north where the legions huddled in their camps, it still made for a damn cold floor in the mornings. For just a moment he reeled and had to lean on the doorframe for support. It was odd, really. He was feeling as weak and old as he had done five years ago, before his wife and the burly Masgava had helped him return to a level of health and fitness that belied his age. In truth he still was as fit as ever, despite home life having replaced the routine of the legion. But the endless nights of broken sleep were taking a heavy toll, beset by the most appalling dreams, and occasionally by the flailing feet of either Marcus or Lucius, who oft-times yelled in the night until Fronto relented and brought them into bed.

The former officer rubbed his tired, sore, red eyes and wandered over to the large bronze mirror, which had cost half a legionary’s yearly pay, but which Lucilia had pronounced a basic requirement of the villa, for it was unblemished and returned an almost perfect likeness of the viewer. Fronto’s hand strayed to his purse every time he walked past it.

A corpse looked back out of the mirror, and he almost shied away from the sight. The old man in the reflective surface had turned rather grey-haired since he last remembered and, though some of the reason was the fact that it was still wet from the bath, those once shiny dark locks were now unfashionably long and looking rather limp, like a Greek philosopher gone to seed. Though his eyes were dark pink, they were nicely offset by a pale waxy face and deep grey rings beneath each orbit. His chin was clean-shaven from the session in the baths, but rather than removing age-enhancing grey whiskers, the razor had merely revealed a lot more folds and wrinkles than he remembered having.

For the love of Aesculapius, he was looking old. And he knew that while some of it
was
age – he was approaching his fortieth summer – a lot more of it was his current lifestyle.

Lucilia had spent the winter concerned, but in her usual way she masked her worry by treating him like some sort of petulant in-patient. After these last few years, Fronto had become so used to her ways that he could decode her moods, for even when she seemed snippy, it was almost always a method of self-defence, protecting her heart from that which she feared. And he knew that generally the more crabby she got with him, the more concerned she was. But in recent weeks she had become disconcertingly caring and supportive, and that had almost chilled Fronto to the bone.

At her instigation, he had visited two of the best physicians in Massilia, and Greek physicians were the best in the world. Neither had managed to alleviate his troubles, but both had lightened his purse and had expressed their concerns over the effects that his many old healed wounds might still be having beneath the skin; and also at his ‘trick knee’. He had left both practices grumbling over the kind of people that failed to provide a solution to your problem but tried to raise more complications instead. When the second of the two had suggested that he might want to have a check-up in a rather personal area, Fronto had been grateful he wasn’t wearing his sword, else the physician might have been busy stitching up a hole in himself. The man had been busy warming his hands in preparation when Fronto left in a hurry.

Then there had been the apothecaries, two Greeks and one Jew, all of whom had once more emptied his purse in return for a small bag of what looked, smelled, and tasted like forest floor. Each of the three had done nothing to bring untroubled sleep. Indeed, the last of the three had added a fairly severe case of the ‘
Saguntian Squits
’ to the night-time upheaval.

Finally there had been the religious angle. Fronto had been reluctant to visit the temples for so many reasons he’d run out of fingers on which to count them. While he acknowledged the existence of the gods in the same way he acknowledge the existence of paving slabs, he generally paid them about the same level of devotion, barring his personal deities. His history with temples was not good. Almost every visit he had ever made to a temple had ended in disaster, carnage or embarrassment. Given the choice, he would take carnage any time. But on top of his general distrust of those men who felt so pious as to take up the priesthood as a career and a general wariness of gods themselves, the temples in Massilia were to the gods of the Greeks. It felt wrong to stroll up to the three great temples on their rocky heights and pray to Athena and Artemis instead of Minerva and Diana, although at least golden Apollo looked and sounded the same in this strangely hairy Greek world. In the end, he had foregone the three great temples of the city and, in the absence of any house of worship for his patron goddesses, had ended up in the small temple of Asklepios.

The temple was jammed in between residential blocks and stores on the slope of the hill to the north of the harbour, by necessity. Rather than choose a lofty perch like the three great edifices that lorded it over the city, the Asklepion had been located where a natural ‘healing’ spring gurgled from the rock. About that spring had been constructed a modest sacred bath complex, with a small connecting courtyard and precinct, at the heart of which stood the temple itself. He had been greeted at the entrance by a young boy wearing far too much kohl around his eyes so that he looked faintly demonic. The boy had waffled on at him in Greek until Fronto had given him a coin to shut up, and had then escorted him into the temple, where an old man waited – an
asklepiad
– with a white robe, a staff wound round with a carved serpent and a beard he could have lost a young bear in. The ageing priest had listened earnestly to Fronto’s problem and given him a list of appropriate devotions, offerings and libations. Another empty purse, a jar of good wine, a small stack of gold coins and a rather unfortunate chicken later, the bad dreams were still there, and Fronto had crossed another god from his diminishing list of deities to give a flying fornication about.

And so, weeks on and a small fortune lighter, this sallow ghoul stared back from the mirror.

Enough was enough. He’d not mentioned as much to Lucilia, but Fronto personally knew what was at the heart of his troubles: he was missing his lucky charms. Nemesis had been broken and Fortuna had gone with Cavarinos of the Arverni. He could only hope that the luck that he himself was sadly lacking was bearing up his Gallic friend. His troubles had started almost immediately following the absence of Fortuna and Nemesis, and until he replaced the figurines around his neck with appropriate quality work, he would not sleep well.

It was too disheartening to lay the blame for the nightmares upon the multitude of deaths he had left in his wake. He was a soldier born and tried, and to think like that would be to deny all that he was.

Of course, he was no longer a soldier. He was a wine merchant now, even if not a particularly successful one.

He would take the blow on the chin and, without a word to his wife, go to the best artisans in town and commission a replacement for each charm in the best materials and at the highest quality. He would have done so months ago, had the money been available. It still wasn’t, of course, but he would work it out somehow. He couldn’t go on like this.

Of course, the financial side of the business was probably almost as much to blame for his state of exhaustion as the nightmares. He had come to Massilia with grand plans. There were a few Greek wine merchants in town already, of course, but no one with good access to the heart of Roman viticulture down in Campania. And quite apart from the Romans in Gaul who, he knew from years of watching Cita complaining over his stores, created an almost insatiable demand for wine, there was a growing sector of the upper Gaulish society that was starting to turn from their own beer to good southern wine. The trade
should
be lucrative. He’d
felt
that it would be. Even Balbus, who had been initially sceptical and rather disapproving of a Roman noble involving himself too closely in commerce, had nodded his agreement of the workability of the scheme. He would use those local merchant vessels who shipped Gallic goods to Neapolis and came back largely empty. He would fill them with wine from the estates of friends and connections in Campania, which he would be able to acquire considerably cheaper than most others could, and would then sell it on to either local Greek merchants, Gallic traders heading into tribal lands, or to the Roman supply system that fed the army in the north.

He hadn’t been able to tell his mother or sister, of course. His letters to them at Puteoli were carefully worded to avoid all mercantile mention, despite being conveyed there by the same factors who were organising his deliveries. His mother would implode from a hefty dose of patrician-ness if she thought her son had become a common salesman, and his sister would be scathing to say the least. After all, even Lucilia and Balbus had been fairly disapproving, but had lived with his decision because at least it had brought him home from the army.

But not telling the family had added the complication of not being able to rely on family finances. He had not touched the vaults of the Falerii and had funded the initial concern entirely from his own capital following his resignation of commission from Caesar’s army. Every last denarius he could lay his hands on had gone into acquiring the warehouse in the city, the cart and two oxen, a small staff, and the first stock of wine from Campania. Then he had realised that he could hardly afford to pay the ship captains to transport it, let alone the many sundry expenses that seemed to mount daily.

By the week before Saturnalia he had pored over the figures and gloomily labelled himself more or less bankrupt. He still had the assets, of course – the warehouse and a consignment of Falernian on the dock at Puteoli, but he was unable to pay the staff, animal feed, and shipping. In the most humbling moment of his entire life, he had gone to visit Balbus without his wife knowing, and had begged for a hand-out. The old man had been generous to a fault, which had made the need for begging in the first place all the more embarrassing, but at least now he had enough of a float to see him through hopefully ‘til spring. Yet unless business picked up, he would be in trouble again by Aprilis.

His former singulares were helping out. Despite being signed on as household security, they had willingly stepped in to fill roles in the business, but to be honest, they were often more trouble than help. Aurelius had set profits back one evening when he had encountered a bat in the warehouse and dropped a very brittle amphora of very expensive wine as he ran screaming.

The three locals he’d hired were considerably more competent at the actual work – when such work was forthcoming, at least – and yet even they were troubling in their own right. The brothers, Pamphilus with the beak nose and close-set eyes and Clearchus with the tic in one eye and the unsettlingly white hair, were good enough at lifting and carrying and driving the cart. But after weeks in their company there was no escaping the conclusion that they were as thick as two short planks and could be mentally outmanoeuvred by a bowl of beef broth. And they seemed to be dangerously impulsive, too. A horrible combination, but at least a reasonably cheap one. Aurelius hated the pair, and tried to keep away from them, having told Fronto that there was a distinct possibility that he would flatten that beak nose someday. When the brothers had almost run him down in the yard with a cart-load of jars and barrels, Aurelius had had to be dragged away from them screaming imprecations.

And the other hireling… well, Glykon seemed perfectly friendly and helpful and excellently competent at his work. There was absolutely nothing wrong with him, other than the fact that Fronto could feel in his bones that there was something wrong with the man, even if he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

Of course, if he could only get rid of Hierocles, things might be different. But this was a lawful city and not subject to Rome, so Fronto had no real rights here, especially against a Greek who was a citizen of the town. The greasy arse-faced rat of a wine merchant had made Fronto’s life hell since his return to Massilia. The former legate of the Tenth had expected healthy competition, and was ready to have to push hard to carve himself a niche in the market. He had not been prepared for Hierocles. The old bastard had taken Fronto’s dip into the wine trade very personally and had publically decried him as a foreign agent trying to infiltrate free Massilia and bind her to the republic with ties of trade. When Fronto had responded calmly to the contrary, the man had taken his calm for weakness and had stepped up his campaign of defamation to actively accuse him of crooked dealings and various small criminal acts.

Though Fronto had argued his corner in the city’s agora like a good Roman orator and had managed to clear himself of any charge levelled, the stigma of a blackened name seemed to have stayed with him and nothing he could do had rebuilt his reputation. Moreover, being thwarted had simply set Hierocles off on a new path. Unable to remove Fronto through law, he had instead turned to his fellow Greek merchants in the town, further denigrating Fronto and gathering an informal cartel against the new Roman competitor.

Consequently, for the last month, Fronto had found himself repeatedly undercut for deals, passed over by ship captains and the target of seemingly accidental damage to his wares. Business was bad, but even that bad business was dwindling. Soon…