(September: Caesar’s camp, in Menapii territory.)
Fronto rapped quickly on the frame next to the tent’s door and, lifting the flap aside, strode in without ceremony. The general looked up from his desk, where he was making marks on a number of wax tablets.
“Ah, Fronto… good.”
“You called” the legate said and, strolling across to the table, indicated the seat with a question on his face.
“Yes. By all means, sit.”
Fronto sank into the seat and shuffled until he was comfortable. Caesar was looking him up and down with interest.
“Something wrong, general?”
“Not at all. In fact, Brutus was right: you actually appear almost content. It is very disconcerting, particularly after weeks of moping and stomping around.”
Fronto laughed.
“We are almost at the end, Caesar, I think.”
The general nodded, quietly, his face giving nothing away.
“I hope you’re right. I really do hope you are right. I need to return to Rome as much as you do, Marcus, and I need a settled Gaul before I do.”
Fronto shrugged.
“It’s been a week without more than the occasional gnat bite from these tribes. They’ve retreated so deep in the forests it’s pretty clear they have no wish to fight us. Perhaps it’s time we tried to bring things to a conclusion? Perhaps force the issue so that they might accept terms?”
Caesar nodded.
“I had been considering the possibility. Slaves and an example made are good things, but at this point expediency may call for a temperate response to the situation. The deforestation seems to be proceeding apace. I can barely see as far as the tree line now.”
“Yes, we’ve taken the forest back well over a mile now. But to keep doing so will take so long it’ll be winter before we leave here. We need to do something now to try and bring things to a satisfactory end.”
Caesar frowned. There was a sparkle in Fronto’s eyes that he recognised.
“What are you planning, Marcus? I know that look: you have an idea.”
“I was talking to the scouts on the way over here. The latest searches along the forest paths have become a little more revealing.”
“Go on…”
“Yesterday they found a clearing only a half mile from the current forest edge. It had clearly held wagons in large numbers until recently.”
The general nodded.
“I debriefed them myself, yes.”
Fronto smiled.
“The tracks that led from the clearing deeper into the woods were fresh; a day or two old at the most.”
“And…”
“And that means that the enemy’s supplies, their entire wagon train, is closer to us than it really should be. It can’t be far inside the forest. I suspect that, while the tribes can easily move deeper and deeper into the woods, they have left the area where their trails and tracks are and moved into inhospitable terrain. They’ll be having to hack and clear a path for their wagons as they move and it’ll be slowing the whole process down. Their wagon train is exposed, general.”
Caesar cracked a slow smile.
“And with no supplies, their resistance would soon falter.”
Fronto grinned in return.
“I see you get my point.”
The general steepled his fingers and sat back.
“I presume this sudden enthusiasm is by way of you volunteering?”
The legate shrugged.
“Can’t really send more than a small vexillation in there. Marching a whole legion into the forest would be asking for trouble and they’d have difficulty manoeuvring. A smaller unit of, say, two or three centuries would have the size and flexibility to work within the woods.”
The general nodded and spread his hands on the table before him.
“Three of your centuries will be enough? With a few scouts who know the paths, of course?”
“Actually, I was thinking of taking two of mine and one from the Fourteenth if Plancus is amenable. They’re Gauls themselves and might be useful.”
Caesar nodded.
“Whatever you think best. Plancus will give you the troops. If he is reluctant, feel free to drop my name in the conversation.”
Fronto nodded and stood slowly, pausing with a faint look of surprise.
“I just realised that I never even asked why you called for me in the first place?”
“Nothing that cannot wait, Marcus.”
Fronto grinned and straightened.
“Then if you’ll excuse me, general, I’ll just run out and end the war…”
Still smiling, the legate strode out of the tent and stopped there. Four of Ingenuus’ cavalry guard stood to attention around the tent, and three soldiers, clerks by the look of it, stood waiting to see the general, tablets and scrolls in their arms. With a chuckle, he leaned across to the nearest, pulled the documents from the surprised man’s hands and dropped them on the pile of the man in front.
“There. Now you’re free. Do me a favour and run to the camp of the Fourteenth. There’s a centurion there by the name of…” He stopped and frowned for a moment as he dredged through his memory. “Cantorix, I believe. Tell him that Legate Fronto of the Tenth has requested that he and his century attend in full kit at his earliest convenience. Then find the scouts that came back this morning and send them too.”
The clerk looked confused and a little worried for a moment.
“Run along now. Your figures can wait.”
As the man saluted and ran off in the direction of Plancus’ camp, Fronto strode on, whistling, toward his own men. Making his way along the main thoroughfare between the tents and past the larger quarters of the tribunes, he spotted the primus pilus waving his vine staff at two legionaries.
“Carbo?”
The ruddy-faced centurion turned and saluted.
“Have two centuries fall in. We’re going for a jaunt in the woods.”
The primus pilus gave him a broad grin.
“Nice day for a stroll.”
Turning, he bellowed a command at the two legionaries and, paying them no further attention, strode off into the camp to find his men.
Fronto wandered across to his own tent and ducked inside. Scanning quickly around the interior, he found his helmet, baldric and cuirass and, collecting them, went to sit on his bunk and start strapping things on. Early on in his command, Priscus had tried to persuade him to take a body slave to help with these things, as was the custom with senior officers, but it just felt a little soft having a person dress you. How could a man be expected to hold his head high and command a legion when he couldn’t even dress himself?
It was therefore a minor irritation when he realised that he’d fastened the wrong buckle on his cuirass while thinking and been left with a spare strap.
By the time he had adjusted it and slung the baldric across his shoulder, fastened the ribbon around his middle and tucked the liner into his helmet before jamming it unceremoniously on, he could hear the general hubbub of men assembling on the open ground outside. Standing, he straightened, flexed his knuckles, and strode outside.
Carbo and a centurion he knew by sight, a big man with a flattened nose, stood to attention with their men lined up behind them parade-style.
Fronto nodded in satisfaction and cast his eyes back up toward the centre of the enormous camp, where he could see other legionaries jogging in formation toward them. No one in the ranks spoke as they awaited the arrival of the Fourteenth, who reached the parade ground area and fell into place next to the others. Fronto glanced at them out of the corner of his eye and could see the centurion smiling in realisation.
“Good morning, men.”
A roar answered him from the three centuries.
“I’ve a little job for you all. We’re going to take a wander in woods, with the help of the scouts who went out this morning, and we’re going to lay first eyes, then hands, on the enemy supply wagons. By lunchtime I want those wagons back here and being distributed into the army’s stores. Think you can do that?”
Another roar.
“Good. Stand at ease for a few minutes until the scouts arrive. Get to know one another, since you’ll be working quite closely over the next few hours.”
He grinned.
“Officers to me, please.”
Carbo and the broken-nosed centurion strode out front, closely followed by the officer of the Fourteenth, who was shaking his head, smiling.
“You two? I’d like you to meet Cantorix of the Fourteenth. I have it on good authority his century are good men, and I thought the presence of a staunchly Gallic unit might be advantageous this morning.”
Cantorix grinned.
“You could have told me you were an officer, sir. I’d have given you due deference.”
Carbo glanced across at him.
“A less officer-like officer you never will meet, Cantorix. If he turns up among your lot again, would you be kind enough to send him somewhere safe at the back?”
Cantorix laughed out loud.
“I suspect it’s not that easy!”
“True.” The primus pilus turned back to his commander. “I suppose there’s no point in trying to persuade you that we can do this without you and that a senior officer shouldn’t be putting himself in such a frankly stupid position?”
Fronto shook his head.
“My plan… my unit. Besides, there’s something else I might want to do and that would require someone with staff authority.”
Cantorix shuffled and shrugged his shoulders so that his mail shirt slipped into a more comfortable position.
“Legate Plancus is going to throw a major fit when he hears we’ve been seconded without his say so, sir.”
Fronto brushed that aside.
“Caesar agreed, so Plancus can go piss up a pilum or argue it with the general.”
The braided Gaulish centurion smiled.
“Fair enough, sir. How are you planning to do this?”
“First step is to head to the previous site of their wagons, then to move on to the current location. We’ll split the scouts into three groups, one with each century. Cantorix? You and yours will take the main forest path that the wagons took at a nice slow stroll. Feel free to let your entire century talk in their native tongue. I know the officers usually discourage such a thing, but I’m hoping to try and talk these tribes down from their pedestal and convince them that without supplies to keep them going, they’re better off joining us, and you could go a long way to helping with that.”
He smiled.
“That, of course, means that I’ll be going with you. The other two centuries will make their way as fast as they can by circuitous routes, guided by the scouts, until they can come at the clearing from other directions. That way, if we have to do this the hard way, we’ll have a solid advantage. Hopefully, you’ll get there moving fast before we do at our leisurely pace and be in position before we arrive. When you get there, spread out ready for trouble, but stay back and hidden.”
The other two centurions nodded.
“And then, sir?”
“Then we become heavily reliant on the scouts. I would like to try and repeat the procedure on the current position of the wagons, but that might be more troublesome, depending on what trails the scouts can find and where they lead. Be aware at all times of your bearings, as one century getting horribly lost in those woods with an antagonistic bunch of the enemy wandering around could be a somewhat fatal experience.”
He took a deep breath.
“If all goes well and the three centuries converge on the wagons, we’ll overcome whatever resistance there is and then two centuries can form a line and hold them off if necessary while the third leads the wagons back out of the forest. All clear?”
The three men nodded.
“Good, then you’d best fall back in. The scouts are coming.”
Fronto and Cantorix jogged forward along the trail as quietly as they possibly could; surprisingly so, really, given the mail shirt and phalera harness the centurion was wearing. The scout waved them to the side of the track and the two officers moved quickly off the road and onto the grass verge, beneath the branches, as they approached the point where the Gaulish scout was peering around a bend in the track.
Fronto appeared behind the man and leaned out to look. The clearing was large, perhaps a hundred and fifty or even two hundred feet in diameter, and packed with everything the tribe on the run might need. The wagons, which numbered in the dozens, were arrayed in half of the clearing, carefully manoeuvred and parked between the remaining stumps where the tribe had cut the trees down to widen the clearing and also to form the fence that sealed off the remaining half of the clearing and which held cattle, goats and pigs in tight confines.
Fronto ducked back, irritation plastered across his face. Cantorix shrugged and then peered out himself. Nodding, he pulled his head back in to the side. There were a few ordinary folk of the tribes, going about feeding the animals and gathering items from the wagons.
That wasn’t what was annoying the legate, though.
The wagons had been carefully arranged to fit between the stumps and it must have taken hours to get them in that position. Freeing them and taking them back along the trail to the Roman camp would be near impossible in anything less than half a day.
For some reason, Fronto had expected them to be on the run, prepared to flee at all times, the beasts still hooked up to the vehicles and in a position for a quick escape. He hadn’t planned on them having set up a semi-permanent store.
He slumped and shrugged.
Cantorix frowned and made strange arcane dances with his fingers, miming something incomprehensible. Fronto stared at him and shrugged again. The centurion sighed and repeated the gestures, slowly and elaborately, waggling his eyebrows meaningfully. Fronto sighed.
“I don’t know what you’re saying” he whispered through gritted teeth.
“Kill the cattle, burn the wagons” the man hissed back at him quietly.
Fronto frowned. It was a thought that had occurred to him before now. Shame to waste it all, but the primary goal of the whole escapade was to cut off the supplies of the rebels. The smoke from the wagons would alert the whole lot, of course. And then, with it having been dry for days there was always the possibility of the woods catching fire. Could it be worth it?
He shook his head. No. His reason for this was more than merely depriving them of goods. It was goading them into accepting terms and surrendering.
He shook his head again, this time directly at Cantorix.
“No. We go ahead and take them all. If it takes all day, we’ll still do it. Let’s just hope the others got here too.”
The Gaulish centurion gave him a helpless look, but nodded and Fronto nudged the scout and pointed back along the track. The three men wandered back to the seventy men standing in formation on the trail a couple of hundred yards away. Fronto looked them up and down.
“Well, centurion, that’s an end to the sneaking. Can’t sneak a whole century up there, Besides, we need the others to hear that we’ve arrived.”
Cantorix nodded and gestured to his optio.
“Idocus? You get the animal job. When we get to the clearing, the left side is a huge animal pen, separated into three parts. Send three men to the pigs and three to the goats. Get them roped together and start leading them back to camp. Take another twenty men and start moving the oxen out two at a time onto the track. While you’re doing that, I’ll take another twenty and we’ll start moving the carts out to hook them up to the animals. Soon as they’re done we can start moving them off, with one driver per cart.”
He turned to Fronto.
“That leaves only about twenty five men to defend us while we work. Will that be enough, sir?”
Fronto shrugged. “It’ll have to be. Hopefully, the other centuries have made it round through the woods and are waiting for us. I’ll take the carts, you lead the defence. If the Tenth arrive to help, send more men back to help us with the carts and animals. Alright?”
Cantorix nodded.
“I’m sending Dannos and Villu to help you. Villu used to be a thief and cattle rustler, I believe, so he should be quite useful, but he also had his tongue cut out, so don’t expect much conversation.”
Fronto rolled his eyes.
“Let’s go and hope Fortuna’s watching over us.”
Taking a deep breath, he raised his arm and let it fall and the century of men began to tramp forward in perfect unison. Fronto smiled to himself. Despite recent outbursts he would rather forget, he was surprised to find, as he thought about it, how many Gauls in whose company he had spent the past year and upon whom he had come to rely. Perhaps what the army was doing wasn’t merely an impediment to getting home, but was purposeful and worthwhile on a higher level.
The alarm went up in the clearing before the century even came within sight. There was a certain advantage to the alarm, in a way, since the non-combatant folk of the tribe would have time to stop milking goats and flee before they became involved in a brawl.
The century of Gallic legionaries rounded the slight bend in the track and the forest opened up ahead. Somewhere in the distance, beneath the canopy of the woods, a deep horn blow sounded.
The century marched out of the trail, four abreast, into the open and shouted commands went up. A column of men led by the optio picked up the pace to treble time and ran off to the left, toward the animal pens.
Another call from the centurion led a second group to peel off to the right. Fronto veered away with them, watching the centurion run straight ahead with his men, doubling their speed as they made their way through the middle of the clearing toward the group of tribal warriors who had been on watch and who were now hurriedly arming themselves and taking up a defensive stance.
The ground in the clearing was uneven and, though cleared of undergrowth, still plagued by hidden rocks and the gnarled, bulging roots of the cleared trees. The sounds of commotion in the near distance, muffled by the trees, spoke volumes about the sudden activity of the tribes. Their camp must be close, given the proximity of the noise, clearly caused by the tribes rallying their warriors to run and defend the supplies.
Fronto and his men reached the nearest wagon and the legate scrambled up onto the tree stump next to it, just high enough to afford him a view over the carts. Behind him, men started hauling the cart back, grunting and groaning with the exertion as they pulled the vehicle back into the open toward the track. As it passed slowly by, Fronto lifted the rain-proof cover and nodded in appreciation at the many sacks of wheat that were stored beneath; enough grain for an entire tribe for at least a week.
He was busy mentally congratulating himself for the speed and efficiency with which they had shifted the first cart and was beginning to believe that he had overestimated the work and that the whole job would be over quicker than he had initially thought when his face fell. A quick glance across the clearing, taking in the number of carts and how some of them were wedged in narrow spaces swept that thought aside. Yes, they had moved the first vehicle easily, but then it was in the easiest position to begin with.
As the cart cleared the tree stumps and more of the men ran in to approach the second cart, it became clear that already this one would be trouble, wedged sideways. He frowned and scanned the tops. They would have to move two other carts into the edge of the wood just to free up the space to move this one along. The whole thing was like some child’s wooden puzzle.
A crash across the clearing, followed by the grating and jarring sounds of steel on steel announced that Cantorix and his men had engaged the guards. The amount of shouting in guttural tongues, however, clearly showed that reinforcements were on the way from the camp deeper in the woods. Briefly, Fronto wondered whether it might have been a better idea just to attack their camp, but he quickly brushed the idea aside as potentially suicidal. Three centuries could probably hold the clearing against the enemy and shift the goods, but that was fighting a purely defensive action with no expectation of victory. A full attack would be a whole different matter.
He gradually became aware, as his men moved the next cart, that there were more metallic sounds, coming from a different direction. For a second he held his breath, tensely, but the sound was a familiar one: that of a century of men in mail, their weapons and shields out and ready. He craned to see over the carts.
One of the other centuries from the Tenth was pouring into the clearing from the eaves of the woods past the carts. Fronto grinned. He couldn’t tell which century it was from here, but he could see the centurion’s crest at the front as it disappeared among the carts, leading the men into the fight.
Good. He had been starting to worry whether the others would get here. If all had gone according to plan, they’d have been here already, ready to come in as pincers and close the trap. Clearly that had not happened, since only one century had arrived at all and they were late.
Still, better now than later when they were all dead.
Gesturing to the men to keep working on the carts, Fronto clambered up from the stump and onto the nearest wagon. Standing high, he took in the scene. As ordered, men were roping the animals together ready to lead them back along the track, while a pair of oxen were being brought forward to lead the first cart away. The irritating and befuddling puzzle of which carts to move to free the others was gradually being unravelled by three particular legionaries from the Fourteenth, who were arguing and pointing, the one called Villu making strange angry noises with his tongueless mouth as he jabbed his finger at another legionary’s chest. In the distance, at the far end of the clearing, Cantorix was struggling with his two dozen men to hold the wide track that led back toward the enemy encampment. Already he was facing odds of three to one, though the century from the Tenth were closing for support.
Fronto nodded in satisfaction and was about to drop back down from the wagon when he saw the enemy reserves beginning to arrive. Between the trees and along the track, Gauls were flooding toward the clearing. His plan for a quick attack, in and out with the wagons, was looking extremely foolish now. As he watched, the flood of reinforcements poured into the fight, meeting the fresh steel and muscle of the Tenth’s century as they came up from the wagons. The struggle was becoming bitter and hard-fought.
There had to be something he could do to tip the situation? Something that would stop the madness or at least speed up their capturing of the goods. If the Gauls…
His attention was drawn to the other side of the clearing as a pig screamed. Fronto frowned as he tried to see what had happened, but as he surveyed the animal pens, his vision refocused on the arrows falling among them. The Gauls were shooting into the clearing indiscriminately, careless of whether they killed animals or men!
Fronto shook his head in disbelief. Were these people so blinded and stupid that they would kill the animals needlessly rather than let them fall into enemy hands? The policy of deprivation that had plagued the early days of the campaign?
As he raged mentally over the stupidity of it all, he realised that more arrows were issuing from beneath the boundary of the wood and the archers hidden therein. These, though, flashed orange and flickering through the air, soaked in pitch and burning bright. He stared in disbelief as the first successful shot hit a wagon of grain and flour nearby, sending flames racing out across the material and sacking.
The danger hadn’t occurred to him until he realised that the missile blow that punctured the sack had also sent a cloud of white dust into the air, which, catching the flame from the arrow, exploded with a powerful flash that seared his face and left him with purple and green blotches obscuring his vision.
Fronto staggered back and collapsed onto the wagon as more fire arrows fell among the supplies.
“The idiots!” he bellowed to nobody in particular as he struggled upright, rubbing his eyes to try and clear the blotchy colours.
“The stupid, mindless idiots. Destroy anything rather than let it become Roman. Idiocy!”
He became aware that the men working on the carts had stopped to look up at him in surprise.
“Leave that. Keep the carts safe and try to put the fires out. Piss on them if you have to.”
Shaking his head and blinking, Fronto jumped to the next cart, a low grumble beginning in his throat. From wagon to wagon he hopped, the grumble growing into an angry growl and threatening to become a roar as he picked up pace, moving across the clearing toward the fight, ignoring the deadly flaming shafts that whipped past him.
The fighting was becoming more deadly and vicious as the reinforcements from both sides turned it from a skirmish into more of a small battle. Screams and clanks filled the air as Fronto jumped from a cart to a wagon and, reaching the edge of the affray, threw his arms up.
“Disengage!” he bellowed.
The command was such a surprise that it took a while for the legionaries to obey and pull back. The Gauls seemed as astonished as the Romans and hovered for a moment, uncertain as to what was expected of them. Even the arrow fire faltered and slowed to a stop.
A Gallic warrior, bare-chested and with a large, heavy sword held in his two hands, raised it and stepped forward.
Fronto pointed at him.
“That means you too!”
The Gaul glanced up at him in confusion.
“I know some of you understand me, if not all. Now disengage. Stop this stupidity at once!”
The Gauls stared, and low conversation broke out in confused tones. Fronto became aware that Cantorix and Carbo were both looking up at him expectantly.
“This is quite enough. Lower your weapons, all of you.”
Here and there, warriors allowed the tips of their swords to descend to the turf.
“Right. I knew some of you understood. Who’s in charge there?”
There was a good deal more conversation and argument and finally a warrior with a mail shirt and a spear, a torc around his throat, standing somewhere in the centre, looked up at Fronto as a circle opened around him.
“You? Good. I don’t care whether you’re a King, a chief, a druid or whatever. This fight is ridiculous, as is this whole rebellion. You spent over a year living quite happily alongside the Roman forces at Nemetocenna, less than fifty miles from here. I expect you traded with them? It’s very likely that soldiers from the garrison there have been helping construct important structures on the borders of your lands: aqueducts? Drainage channels?”
He paused and realised that all conversation had stopped as they listened.
“And now you revolt, like sheep following the other tribes of the north. The Veneti have a problem with the commander in their region and discontent spreads out like ripples in a pond until over here on the opposite side of Gaul, you throw off the imagined yoke of a non-existent oppression and rise up in pointless anger.”
He gestured in irritation at the armed men from both forces before him.
“We came to settle things and in your first attack you lost so many men that you’ve done nothing but run around in the forest picking at us and jabbing at us like an irritating mosquito. You cannot win this, as I’m sure you are all now very well aware. All you are doing now is putting off the inevitable end of this uprising and with every day you drag it out, you make a conclusion favourable to yourselves less and less likely.”
He pointed back along the track.
“The general can be a merciful man if he is given the room to be so, but often he is pushed to the edge and has no choice but to punish. Don’t make him punish you just because you were foolish enough to rise up for something that wasn’t your cause to begin with. I came here today to take away your supplies and try to force a quick end to this, but that is clearly not the way it must be done. I see that, with boundless stupidity, you would rather starve yourself to death than make peace, so I must force the issue a different way.”
“Here is what will happen now. I state this for a fact since, though you will initially argue, in time you will see that there is no other logical choice. The soldiers present with me will return to our camp. We will leave your supplies here and do no further damage.”
He glared at the leader.
“In return for us leaving you your food and your lives, you will pack up and return to your lands and your farms, live like sensible and peaceful people, raise your children, grow your crops and go back to trading with general Labienus and his garrison at Nemetocenna, for which he will continue to protect you from Germans crossing the great river and standing on your neck like they used to.”
He fell silent and folded his arms.
An uneasy quiet descended, broken only by the lowing of the cattle and the twittering of birds. No one moved. Fronto sighed and waved his arms in a dismissing motion.
“Go home!”
He dropped from the wagon to the rear of the legionaries and shrugged as Carbo frowned at him.
“Get the men formed up and take them back to the camp. Hopefully the other century will turn up some time soon. If they appear at the enemy camp and attack, we could be in the shit, so we’d best send the rest of the scouts out to find them. In the meantime, I fear I have to go and explain a few things to the general.”
The centurion laughed.
“I’m not sure what he’ll say about this, sir.”
“Neither am I, Carbo. Neither am I.”
“He did what?”
Brutus stared over the rim of his goblet, choking.
Carbo grinned.
“He told them to go home. It was like watching a parent telling off their boisterous children.”
Brutus shook his head.
“He never ceases to amaze me.”
“What amazed me was the way they actually listened to him and did what he said. I swear that as I looked across at them, even big hairy bastards with an axe that could split a tree down the middle managed to look uncomfortable and embarrassed. It was a sight to behold.”
Brutus laughed and sat back, taking another swig of his wine. Across the tent, Crispus smiled as he poured himself a drink.
“People think Fronto is simple and straightforward, but the longer I know him, the more I come to realise that you just cannot predict what he will do next. He is not a simple man.”
“It was just funny. I had trouble not laughing, but that would have sent them the wrong message.”
Brutus nodded.
“Might have detracted from the message a little.”
The centurion was about to reply when the tent flap was thrown back and the Tenth’s legate strode in and collapsed onto his cot, immediately beginning to unlace his boots.
“Drink?” Crispus prompted.
Fronto stopped his work for a moment and looked up.
“An amphora full if you have it.”
As he took off the first boot and rubbed his foot, Crispus poured him a drink and, leaning over, placed it on the chest next to the cot. Brutus frowned.
“What did he say, then? You’ve been hours.”
“He took some convincing at first, but he was surprisingly open to the possibilities. He’s as eager to finish this and go home as most of us, and I think he’s almost at the point where he’d pay a lot of good money just to keep this land calm. We’ll be staying here for the next week or so, pending the next move of the Morini and Menapii. If they show up in peace at the edge of the forest anywhere along the line, Caesar’s given the order that they should be allowed to pass and return to their lands. The scouts report that they’ve located the other century of men, about three miles north of where they should have been. I’d have a go at them, but to be honest I’m just too tired and relieved that it seems to be over.”
He let his second boot drop and gave that foot a quick rub before reaching for the goblet, draining it in one large mouthful and pushing it back meaningfully toward Crispus.
“So we should be going home in a week or two then?”
Fronto nodded.
“If all is well, we should, yes. I can’t see these lot causing any more trouble. We’ve battered them a bit and hopefully made them see the futility of it all. When we head south, we’ll have to stop in at Nemetocenna and make sure Labienus is aware of the situation, so that he can keep an eye on them, but the man is a born diplomat. The Belgae are rapidly becoming allies largely because of the way he’s treating them.”
Brutus nodded.
“And then we head back to Rome. Not the legions, though. Where will they go?”
Fronto finished undoing his cuirass and let it fall unceremoniously to the floor with a clank.
“They’ll be posted somewhere in the north. Probably not around here though, or it would work against our potential peaceful relations. Maybe back towards Armorica, or towards the Rhine.”
Brutus smiled and leaned back.
“And then we go south to Italia and the warmth of home.”
Fronto turned a wicked grin on him.
“Not you, I fear. You still have a fleet to attend to. Caesar was talking about them, wondering whether to leave them anchored in the west, or bring them up to the north coast, or even take them back to the Mare Nostrum. You could have the fun of leading them through the pillars of Hercules!”
Brutus glared at him.
“That’s not funny.”
“Not meant to be. But it is.”
He ignored the dark look on the man’s face and reached for his refilled goblet.
“I, on the other hand, along probably with the general and any senior officers returning to Rome by land, will head for Massilia and check in on Balbus. I can’t wait to see the old sod again and make sure he’s alright.”
Carbo shook his head sadly.
“It’s been a very long time since I saw Rome.”
“You must be due leave?” Fronto frowned. “I could always arrange it for you? Your second can keep the legion in order while you’re away.”
The primus pilus laughed.
“It would be nice, but not right now. When the campaign’s definitely over and the legions are pulled south I’ll take the time. For now I need to stay with the Tenth.”
Fronto smiled.
“Ever the professional.”
“One of us has to be!” Carbo grinned.
Crispus leaned back and sighed.
“Do you think that’s it? Is Gaul finally pacified?”
“For now” Fronto replied with a shrug. “We can just hope it stays this way. Rome could do with these people, you know? I’ve watched the Thirteenth and Fourteenth legions, with all their Gaulish legionaries, and Galronus’ cavalry, and they bring a certain something to the army that it was lacking. I don’t know what you’d call it? Inventiveness? Freshness? Spirit? I don’t know, but whatever it is, we needed it.”
Brutus nodded and raised his cup.
“To Gaul and Rome… to Roman Gaul.”