The Eagles Conquest

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Once the fortifications were completed, three of the other legions were ferried across the Tamesis and moved into their allocated areas. The auxiliaries and the Twentieth legion remained behind to guard the army's draught animals which grazed over an enormous region on every available strip of pasture land. A string of small forts stretched out along the lines of communication all the way back to Rutupiae and occasional convoys of supplies trundled up to the front, returning empty apart from those bearing invalids destined for an early discharge and subsequent dependence on the corn dole in Rome. Most of the supplies were now being carried along the coast and thence upriver by the transports of the invasion fleet.

A huge supply depot had been established in the legions' encampment, and every day more rations, weapons and spare equipment were unloaded, carefully recorded by the quartermasters, and deposited within the meticulously marked-out grid laid down by the engineers. When the army next took to the field, it would be as well-provisioned and planned as it had been at the start of the campaign.

The legionaries rested while they waited for the Emperor and his coterie to arrive, although there were still many duties to perform. The fort's walls had to be manned, latrines dug and maintained, forage parties sent out to secure firewood and seize any supplies of grain or farm animals they might discover, and scores of other routine duties that comprised army life. Initially the forage parties had set out in full cohort strength, but as the cavalry scouts continued to report few signs of the enemy, smaller groups of legionaries were permitted to leave the camp during daylight hours.

Although Cato had been excused duties until he had fully recovered from his burns, he found that he needed to fill his days doing something useful. Macro had scoffed at his request to help him catch up with the administration. Most veterans placed a premium on snatching as much free time as possible and had learned all the tricks and scams to get out of duties. When Cato presented himself at the centurion's tent with an offer to help, Macro's first inclination was to question what the optio was really up to.

'I just want to do something useful, sir.'

'I see,' Macro replied with a contemplative scratch of his chin.

'Something useful, eh?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Why?'

'I'm bored, sir.'

'Bored?' Macro responded with genuine horror. The possibility of rejecting the chance to indulge in the panoply of off-duty activities of legionary life was something he had never considered. He pondered the matter for a while. Any normal optio might have discovered some new wheeze for screwing extra rations or payout of the century's accounts. But Cato had demonstrated a quite deplorable integrity in his administration of the century's records. In his more charitable moments Macro assumed that Cato must be directing his powerful intelligence into some hitherto overlooked opportunity for personal enrichment at the army's expense. In his less charitable moments he put the lad's conscientiousness down to youthful ignorance of army ways, which experience would eventually put right. But here he was, abusing his excused-all-duties status, and actually requesting something to do.

'Well, let me think,' said Macro. 'The dead men's accounts need settling. How about that?'

'That's fine, sir. I'll get started right away.'

As the bemused centurion looked on, Cato heaved open the lid of the century's record chest and carefully extracted the financial accounts and wills of all the men marked down as 'discharged dead' on the most recent strength return. Before the wills could be validated, each dead man's accounts had to be brought up to date with every chargeable item of equipment offset against accumulated savings. The net value of the legionary's estate was apportioned according to the terms set out in the man's will. If no will existed, written or oral, then strictly speaking the estate should be conferred on the eldest male relative. But in practice most centurions claimed that the man had made an oral will bequeathing their worldly goods to the unit's funeral club. Such additional sources of revenue were needed on active service to fund the large number of memorial stones required. The increased demand pushed up prices, and the grief that the legion's masons felt at the deaths of their comrades was in some small measure assuaged by the tidy sums to be earned in preparing their tombstones.

In the shade of the awning at the front of the centurion's tent, Cato sat quietly, finger moving from item to item, mentally adding up the debts and subtracting the totals from the figures in the savings column. Many of the dead men had left behind more debts than savings, reflecting the fact that they were recent recruits, who were always less likely to survive than seasoned veterans. Most of the names meant little, but some leapt from the page and brought a wave of sadness: Pyrax, the easygoing veteran who had showed Cato the ropes when he had arrived in barracks; Harmon, the bovine brick shithouse who entertained his comrades with farmyard impersonations and ear-splitting farts on demand (perhaps that last was no great loss to civilisation, Cato decided on reflection). They were all men like himself, once living, breathing, laughing human beings with their complement of virtues and faults. Men he had marched alongside for the past months, men who knew each other better than most men know their own families. Now they were dead, their rich experiences of life reduced to a line of figures on a financial record scroll and the few personal belongings that made up their bequest.

Cato's stylus wavered above a waxed tablet, trembling in his uncertain fingers. He remembered that he had been told that death would be his constant companion throughout his career in the army. He had thought he understood the implications well enough, but now he knew that there was a wide gulf between fine concepts expressed in neat phrases, and the sordid reality of war.

In the days while he was recovering he had found that normal sleep did not come easily. He would be lying inside his section tent, eyes closed but mind working feverishly as terrible images of slaughter leapt unbidden before his mind's eye. Even when he was awake the same images forced themselves upon him relentlessly, until he began to doubt his sanity. As nervous exhaustion seeped in he began to hear sounds from the fringes of his waking world: a muffled clash of weapons, Pyrax shrieking out his name or Macro bellowing at him to run for his life.

Cato needed someone to talk to, but he could not unburden himself to Macro. The cheerful insensitivity and bluffness that made him so admirable both in everyday life and in the heat of battle was precisely what made it impossible for Cato to confide in him. He simply could not trust the centurion to understand the torment he was going through. Nor did he want to reveal what he considered to be his weaknesses. The very prospect of having Macro offer him pity or, worse, contempt, filled him with self-loathing.

The most nightmarish image from the grinding sequence of battles recurred when he eventually fell asleep. He would dream he was being held under water by the British warrior once again. Only this time the water was blood, and the thick salty redness of it filled his lungs and choked him. And the warrior did not die, but looked through the red river, face horribly mutilated by a savage wound yet fixed in a terrible grin as his hands held Cato down, far beneath the surface.

Cato would awake with a cry and find himself sitting bolt upright, skin bathed in cold, clammy sweat, the mumbled curses from the disturbed men in his tent shaming him. He would not be able to return to sleep again, and the long night would be spent fighting off the terrible images, until the grey of dawn diluted the thick darkness wrapped around him inside the tent.

This was why he had presented himself at his centurion's tent, desperate for some task that demanded fixed attention for long periods of time, long enough to chase a way the demons that lurked at the fringes of his consciousness. Completing the dead men's accounts demanded enough of his attention to keep the worst excesses of memory and imagination at bay, but he applied himself to the task with such a single-mindedness that the job was completed more quickly than he wanted. So Cato went over the calculations once more, to ensure that they were correct, or so he told himself.

Eventually there was no further excuse for doubting his mathematical competence, and he neatly rolled up the scrolls and carefully placed them back into the records chest. He was just finishing when a shadow fell across the camp desk.

'Hello, Optio,' said Nisus. 'I see that slave-driver centurion of yours is keeping you at it.'

'No, my choice.'

Nisus tilted his head to one side, resting it against a long, thin spear with three prongs. 'Your choice? Think I must have missed a touch of concussion when I examined you. That or some fever is getting a grip on you. Either way, you could do with a break. And, as it happens, so could I.'

'You?'

'Don't look so surprised. Some of our wounded survive my treatment for as much as several days. I just can't get them to die quickly enough. So what's needed is a little diversion. In my case that's fishing. And since we're camped by a river I don't want to waste the opportunity. Want to come along?'

'Fishing? I don't know. I've never tried it.'

'Never tried fishing?' Nisus recoiled in mock horror. 'What's wrong with you, man? The ancient practice of separating our scaly cousins from the water is a man's birthright. Where did you go wrong?'

'I've lived in Rome almost all my life. It didn't occur to me to go fishing.'

'Even with the mighty Tiber roaring through the heart of your city?'

'The only thing anyone ever caught from the Tiber was a nasty dose of Remus' Revenge.'

'Ha!' Nisus clapped his huge hands. 'No chance of that here, so come on, let's get going. They'll be feeding at dusk and we might actually catch something.'

After only a brief hesitation Cato nodded, closed the lid of the chest and slipped the bolt back in the catch. Then the pair of them made their way towards the gate in the east wall.

Macro lifted his tent flap back to watch them and smiled. He had been deeply worried about the lad's dark mood over the past few days. More than once he had looked in on Cato and seen the blank eyes and faintly shifting frown that spoke of a silent distress he had seen in all too many other legionaries after intense fighting. Most men coped with it soon enough but Cato was not yet a man, and Macro had enough sensitivity to realise that Cato did not have the soul of a soldier. An optio of the crack Second Legion he might be, but underneath the armour and army-issue tunic lived a person of quite a different quality. And that person was suffering and needed to talk about it to someone outside the close-knit world of the Sixth Century.

Much as he disliked the casual irreverence of Nisus, Macro was aware that the surgeon and Cato shared a similar sensibility, and that the lad might find some comfort in talking to him. He certainly hoped so.