The Gods of War

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The fog swirled around them, making their long, curled brass horns sound like something from the underworld. Few would have sailed into this, but Marcellus blessed the mist, for it could mean he would get his men ashore unopposed. They had spotted the first of the Lusitani the day before on the eastern shore, following them on land as the fleet made its way north. As darkness fell, beacons were lit on the hilltops so that the message would proceed ahead of those on foot, who could not be expected, in the dark, to match the pace of well-rowed galleys. To the west lay an endless expanse of sea and beyond that the edge of the world, peopled by demons and sea-nymphs who fed on human flesh and turned the wits of those they did not eat.

Nothing could be seen of east or west in this mist. In the bows, the slow chant of the leadsman, calling out the depth of water beneath the keel, added a nerve-jangling litany to the ethereal call of the horns. Marcellus was with the fellow doing the casting, listening carefully to the depths, for they were in shoal water, perhaps surrounded by jagged rocks, with his ship in the very lead, each galley in the fleet taking station right behind the one ahead. If he could get through whatever they faced, so could they.

‘Sand on the line,’ called the leadsman, before casting it ahead again.

The quinquereme rowed on slowly, its forward movement carrying it to a point where the line was vertical. The leadsman hauled quickly, pulling it out of the water, examining the tallow at the end to see what lay on the bottom, then, swinging it in an ever-widening circle, cast it forward again.

‘Give the order for silence,’ said Marcellus to a sailor standing behind him. ‘No more horns. And you, leadsman, whisper to me.’

The sailor rushed to obey and his young commander strained forward. They were close inshore now, and the sound of the waves would tell him if he had guessed right. If they crashed unevenly and noisily, he would be on a rocky shore, in grave danger of holing his ship and sinking, but if he heard the hiss of water running evenly up a beach, then he would be safe. Marcellus could put men ashore and start to build the first Roman stockade in Lusitani territory.

The fog lifted like a curtain suddenly whisked aside. Marcellus did not look back to see if the other galleys were still hidden, being too taken by the sight that greeted him on the sandy shore: rows and rows of Lusitani tribesmen, their spear tips glinting in the watery sun, lined the golden beach. A great roar welcomed him, with the spears jabbing impatiently, and threateningly, in the air. In the middle of the throng stood a magnificently clad chieftain, who opened his arms, shield in one hand, sword in the other, in a gesture intended to invite them to do battle.

‘Steer parallel to the shore,’ he called and the galley swung round, each ship emerging from the fog doing likewise, eventually anchoring in a line that matched the serried ranks of warriors waiting for them to try and wade ashore.

‘Well, Regimus, what do you think?’

The older man rubbed his short, iron-grey hair. ‘Not a single ship. We’ve haven’t seen one the whole way here.’

‘No,’ replied Marcellus. ‘Yet these Lusitani are here. It’s as though they knew in advance that this were where we intended to land.’

‘Oh, they knew all right. All that beacon-burning was just to make sure we came as far as this bay. I daresay everyone in Portus Albus knew where we were headed by the time we sailed.’

Marcellus stood still, his eyes fixed on the edge of the shore. He could see the line of weed by the feet of the front rank of warriors; between that and the sea, the sand was wet, which told him they had been there since high tide. If the warriors had waited that long on land, then it was a fair bet that the ships would be at sea, full of men, ready to fall on their rear.

‘Well, Legatus?’ asked Regimus, neatly underlining, by the unusual use of Marcellus’s rank, that the sole responsibility lay with him.

Marcellus smiled. ‘I’ve no intention of retreating, Regimus, though I’m not averse to letting them think I am.’

He turned and looked at the bank of offshore fog. The indentation on the shore was like a capsule, with the mountains at the back, the arms of the bay on each side running into the fog, forming an impenetrable wall to the rear.

‘I think they’re hoping we’ll attack.’

Marcellus interrupted, still smiling. ‘At which point their ships will come in and try to catch us in the water as we wade ashore.’

‘That thought might cheer you up, Marcellus Falerius, but it makes my blood go cold.’

The young legate laughed. ‘Don’t be silly, Regimus. Can’t you see we’ve got them in a trap?’

The rings of earthworks, in the morning light, seemed to rise one upon the other like some gigantic temple. Below Numantia, in front of their position, two rivers cut a wide swathe through the countryside. The only route of attack lay between those rivers; the other sides of the hill fort had approaches that were too steep for a proper assault.

‘As you said, Aquila, if this place falls, it will break the spirit of Iberian resistance.’ Aquila smiled, knowing that his general, who was not one for hyperbole, had not finished. ‘The question is, will our spirit survive to see it destroyed?’

Aquila felt that he was seeing something familiar that he recognised from a dream, but it was hard to tell if that was true or just wild imagination. He had heard so many tales about the place, he felt he knew every stone and earthwork by heart. All around them the legionaries were hard at work constructing a camp, which seemed the wrong course of action. As always, when faced with a problem, he took his eagle in his hand, something Titus observed.

‘Does that bird have the power to divine the future?’

The quaestor smiled at him. ‘Many people have thought so.’

‘Like every man in the legions,’ he continued, answering the look on Aquila’s face. ‘I’ve had no end of hints, friend, that I should consult your charm, so that we can all get out of this alive. The men have great faith in it and no faith at all in the priests and their chickens.’

Titus looked again at the fortress of Numantia, a place so much stronger than he had ever imagined, a site that truly lived up to its reputation. For the first time since they had set out, he considered that he might have to order a retreat, wondering if even the novel tactic he had decided to employ would work on such a formidable obstacle. His mind went back to the conference he held on his return from the south, to the looks on the faces of his officers as he outlined his plan to turn Brennos’s great defensive bastion into a trap.

‘Our weapon, gentleman, is a combination of action and inaction. We will make breaches in the wall of the fort, and men will die doing so, but we will have plenty of time to rest between assaults.’

The eyes that had fixed on him then, in a look brazenly enquiring, had been those of his quaestor and they had quite plainly posed the question: what are we going to do about all the tribesmen not in the hill fort? Titus knew he had truly gained Aquila Terentius’s trust at that point, for as he spoke, the look in the eyes changed from challenge to wonder. He told them that he intended to build a wall all the way round Numantia, interspersed with forts that Brennos’s allies would have to attack. He would besiege the enemy within, while those without would be forced to attack him in a situation heavily to their disadvantage. Such a situation would discourage them, and once that happened, he would detach enough men to fight their way back to the coast, opening up a supply route which meant he could stay in front of Numantia forever.

Like all plans, it looked good on paper; now, with the task visible before him, it was less so. But Aquila’s next words, delivered with such heart-warming conviction, chased any thoughts of failure away. ‘If we can eat, General, and they can’t, then they must eventually surrender.’

Titus looked at the terrain. Apart from the fertile strip by the river it was rocky and inhospitable, no place to camp an army unless regular supplies could be guaranteed. He would have to forage for several weeks, living off the land, but it was also no place for the people inside the fortress to grow food other than that one plateau, which could not sustain them forever. Their hillsides were more barren than the plain.

‘A tough nut, Aquila, but seemingly not impossible. I suggest we ride round the place and see where we should site our forts before it gets dark.’

They all knew Marcellus’s orders, nor had he missed the looks — part uncertainty, part mistrust. The galleys weighed anchor and, to loud cheers from the massed ranks of the Lusitani, they swung their bows to head out of the bay. The warrior chieftains might have wondered why they formed up and rowed out to sea abreast of each other — a manoeuvre Marcellus had been forced to employ, and there was no way of knowing if that would allow those on the beach to guess the truth. The fog was thinning as the morning sun burnt it off, but it was still enough to swallow them up, while all the time his single drum beat the pace for the whole fleet.

‘I see no other way to split them up,’ he said to Regimus. ‘If we decline to go ashore and wait until the fog lifts, then their ships will simply run away. They know they can’t stand against quinqueremes.’

‘Would that not count as a victory?’ asked Regimus.

‘No!’ snapped Marcellus. ‘We have to land sometime and beat them in battle, and that applies to their ships as well. We’re here to stay.’

‘I still think you’re taking a terrible risk, Legatus,’ said Regimus, who had remained formal ever since he had issued his commands.

Marcellus ignored him, calling softly to the oar master to keep his time steady. Another man stood beside him counting off the number of strokes and, as he reached a thousand, the oar master gave a quick drum roll. Regimus pushed the sweep and the rowers on one side lifted their oars so that the galley swung round in its own length. Timing at this point was crucial and Marcellus left the decision as to when they were fully round to Regimus. The older man called to the oar master, who gave another quick roll on the drum, before reinstating his steady beat, which increased slowly as the oars bit into the water. By the time the line of galleys emerged once more from the fog, they were going at battle speed, racing towards the shore in line abreast, Marcellus, in the bows, relieved to see that his enemies had done that which he expected; he had no need to abort his progress. Instead he called for more effort.

The Lusitani, thinking the Romans had departed, had broken ranks and they were milling about like a mob, half still on shore, the rest anything from ankle- to knee-deep in the shallows. The horns sounded in panic as their chieftains tried to reform them, which only added to the confusion. The gorgeously clad warrior who had challenged them to battle was in the water, in front of his men, using the boss of his shield to try to get them back into line. Marcellus watched the shore eagerly as it came near, and also the two galleys on either side as they edged slightly closer to his vessel. The men in the bows were standing by to release the corvus, the bridge that dropped from the front of the ship, which would provide a dry and defensible route for his soldiers to get ashore.

The Lusitani, still disordered, swept forward to form a ragged line in the shallows, just behind their leader, their indiscipline playing further into their enemies’ hands. They expected the Romans to heave to, anchor, then wade ashore. It was impossible to count how many, hemmed in by those behind them, died in the shallow water, crushed by the quinqueremes’ bows as Marcellus drove all his ships at ramming speed into the soft sand of the beach. Their leader was one of them, his gold-embossed metal breastplate cracking like a nutshell as the prow drove over him, sending his blood flowing outwards to stain the clear blue water. The wooden bridges, with their evil spikes, dropped onto the heads of the tribesmen, disabling even more and, as Marcellus’s troops careered across them, the Lusitani found the Romans in their midst. The sailors, obeying their orders, rushed like Egyptian acrobats along the oars, which were raised out of the water, with each galley now so close that they interlocked. Quickly they lashed them together so that the entire fleet presented a solid line that could not be penetrated, either by the warriors on the shore, or the ships that would come in to aid them, should the fog disperse.

To begin with, it was a series of individual combats, not a battle, but the Romans had the advantage. They could, if driven back, retire to a safe and unassailable base: their galleys. Once they gained a foothold on the beach, they could be reinforced, fanning out to form a proper line. The battle raged back and forth, but every movement, in either direction, cost the lives of more Lusitani warriors than Romans. Marcellus, once he was sure his fleet was secure, personally led the main assault from his galley, for the first time in his life truly at liberty to use those skills he had learnt as a boy and a man on the Campus Martius.

He was the first to get a sizeable body of legionaries ashore. The men at the oars, now armed and numerous, poured onto the beach behind him, his advance party forming a line that the tribesmen could neither breach nor destroy. The men from the next galley to the right, after a hard fight, linked up; and, in time, the same thing happened on the left, until the entire foreshore was in Roman hands. The legionaries, at the command, advanced steadily, pushing back the tribesmen until the majority of them were penned against the rocks that surrounded two sides of the bay. Some escaped up the gentle incline in the centre, driven hard by the pursuit, but most died where they stood, their blood turning the golden sand to deep red.

Marcellus had floated his ships off on the rising tide before the fog lifted. The small Lusitani ships, numerous and loaded with men, looked upon a scene they had never thought to see. Floating before them lay an impenetrable line of battle-ready quinqueremes, while just inland the Romans were occupied building a stockade.

Their horses’ heads drooped wearily by the time Titus and Aquila returned; the sun was well down in the sky and would be gone within the hour. Their tents were up, with hot water waiting and the air full of the smell of food. Fabius, with his usual scrounger’s ability, had found the ingredients for a sumptuous meal, including several large fish from the nearby river.

‘What’s the point of me doing all this if you’re not going to use it?’ said Fabius, pointing angrily at the steaming bath in the middle of the tent.

Ever since Aquila’s elevation, Fabius had been trying to pamper him. His ‘nephew’s’ efforts had fallen on stony ground. ‘If I need a wash, there’s a perfectly good river nearby.’

‘Which comes straight out of the mountain snows. Dive in that and your nuts will drop off. I can just hear you on the oration platform. You’ll open your mouth to speak and find out that you’ve turned into a eunuch.’

Aquila smiled, the last part of this stricture being delivered in a high-pitched voice. He began to strip off his armour and decorations. ‘You’re so feeble, you city folk. No wonder Rome’s in so much trouble.’

‘Are we in trouble?’ Fabius asked the question eagerly, for he made a tidy sum, these days, out of letting slip information to the troops.

‘Ask me tomorrow.’

Aquila took the large robe that Fabius had laid out for him and went out of the tent. He was not alone in his desire to bathe in the river and the gates of the camp were guarded but open, while the men on duty lined the route to protect the swimmers. Fabius was right about the water, it was icy, but after such a hot, tiring day, it was a blessed relief. He emerged onto the bank to find Cholon standing by his clothes. They had hardly exchanged a word since the day Aquila had thrown him out of the camp, and every time the Greek had thrown a glance at the new quaestor, it had immediately turned to a sour frown. Yet now the man was smiling, and he even picked up and offered Aquila his robe, at the same time indicating the men splashing about.

‘I’ve often wondered at your Roman love of water, Aquila Terentius.’

The younger man was not one to bear a grudge against someone like Cholon, who had, after all, been invited to come to the base camp, and he knew that Titus, who had issued that invitation, held the man in high regard, so he smiled back at him, making the peace.

‘A distinct advantage, having soldiers who can swim. I hope you have noted in your history how it won us that battle at the river.’

Cholon’s eyes were fixed on Aquila’s neck, with the gold eagle swinging back and forth as he roughly towelled his naked body.

‘Will it win you this one?’ asked the Greek, pointing to the water from which he had just emerged. Clearly it was a way in and out of the defender’s perimeter.

‘It might,’ replied Aquila thoughtfully, nodding towards the fort, huge and menacing on the hill above them. ‘It depends on whether they can swim too.’

Having surveyed the terrain, Titus called a conference of all the officers in his army, down to the rank of centurion. Only the most senior knew what was coming, but before them all lay a map of the fort and the surrounding countryside, with a great ring running like a line of blood at the extremity.

‘We will build forts of our own at these seven points. I want them joined by a palisade, permanently guarded, with a mobile reserve standing by in each fort to sally out and hold the line if it’s attacked.’ Titus stabbed his finger at various points. ‘I want all these trees cleared and one or two of the hills close by flattened. No one is to get in, or out, unless we wish it.’

‘The rivers will still be open, sir,’ said Publius Calvinus.

Titus looked up from the table, his face hard.

‘That will be the last thing we will seal. I want a pontoon of bridges over them, backed by booms and chains. We will cut Numantia off from the outside world, and if we have to stay here forever, we will starve them out.’

‘You speak the language,’ said Titus. ‘And anyway, it’s a bad idea for a commander to negotiate personally.’

‘Why?’ asked Aquila, puzzled. He put down his knife, stopped chewing and looked hard at his general.

‘Because his word would be final,’ added Cholon.

Aquila half-suspected this whole scheme was his idea. They might be at peace with each other now, but he suspected that Cholon was a slippery customer.

‘Is that a bad thing?’

Cholon smiled, increasing Aquila’s discomfort. ‘An envoy makes proposals but he can always pretend that there is a point beyond which he cannot proceed and, should he go too far, his commander can always reprimand him and revoke the agreement.’

Cholon was basing his attitude on what he had achieved as an envoy in Sicily all those years ago, acting on behalf of Lucius Falerius Nerva. The old senator might have set them, but it was he who had negotiated the terms that saw the slave leaders desert their followers, though one, a Celt, had proved intransigent and died for his stubbornness. For a moment, he contemplated giving Aquila an explanation of those events so he would comprehend what Cholon was driving at — for he had always had the ability to deny things on the grounds that his superior would not agree — or go back to the table and say some previously agreed point was not acceptable, but he decided against it as being too distracting.

Aquila, who was looking at him very directly, took another mouthful of food, chewing slowly while he ruminated. ‘So what you’re saying is this: that I should go into the hills, talk to a tribal chief called Masugori, an ex-client of Rome, who would like to do nothing more than stick a spear so far up my arse that it comes out of my mouth, and make promises that you might decide not to keep?’

Cholon winced at the way that Aquila had reached his conclusions, though he replied calmly enough. ‘That, as an interpretation, is somewhat crude.’

‘Get stuffed!’

Titus burst out laughing, while Cholon’s face took on a hurt expression.

‘If I make an agreement,’ said Aquila, his blue eyes now boring into those of the Greek, ‘Rome keeps it, never mind Titus Cornelius.’

‘So?’

‘You’ve met this Masugori, you said, so you should know.’

‘It was a long time ago, before I even put on my manly gown.’

‘But you trusted him?’

‘I think it’s worth a try.’

Again Aquila thought long and hard before replying. The attacks on the legions had ceased as soon as they reached Numantia, and both he and Titus knew what that meant; the enemy was chary about facing the whole of Titus Cornelius’s force in full battle, but they wanted them to stay, and they were giving them a breathing space to get well dug in. The attacks would be resumed just as soon as they commenced the assault and the tribesmen thought the Romans, being both occupied and taking casualties, and running short on supplies, would be so weakened that they could be defeated.

Masugori held the key. His tribe was the closest, and barring the Lusitani, the most numerous. They had once signed a peace with the general’s father that had held until later commanders had so abused their office. If the chief of the Bregones could be brought back to neutrality, it would ease Titus’s task immensely, since supplying the army would become relatively straightforward. It was the life of one man put at risk to save the lives of many. He looked at the two other men, who were watching him closely to see what he would decide, so he just nodded and went back to his food.