came here, I sent packing the quaestor and the legates that Mancinus had brought out from Rome. I was tempted to send them in the same direction as Mancinus, but I didn’t.’
An angry growl came from twenty thousand throats.
‘I also sent for new senior officers and they have yet to arrive. I didn’t think I’d need them for a few months yet, but I can tell you’re ready for battle. That anyone could turn you from what you were — a rabble — back into soldiers, in such a short time, is amazing. So, I’m not going to wait for my legates, who’re on the way from Rome, nor the quaestor I asked for. In fact, when it comes to a second-in-command, I cannot think of anyone more suited to the post than Aquila Terentius.’
They must have guessed what was coming. Titus could feel the tension becoming unbearable as he spoke. He took Aquila by the shoulders and embraced him. The men let forth the greatest cheer he had ever heard in all his years as a soldier.
It was with some difficulty that Aquila made himself heard. ‘We’re ready to march at forty-eight hours’ notice, General.’
‘Good.’
Then Aquila smiled, and as the noise died down he spoke again. ‘I think I owe you an apology.’
‘Do I still have to wait for the “thank you”?’ asked Titus, with a smile.
‘After Numantia,’ replied the new quaestor, who then lifted his gold eagle and publicly kissed it.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Marcellus got his first ship to sea in record time, thanks to the engineering skills of Regimus and the work- rate of the local shipwrights. The old sailor, now once more a decurion, was a real find. ‘Can’t be done’ was not an expression he understood. From bare ribs, the ships started to take rapid shape, and the old man was proud, in more ways than one, of what the shipwrights had achieved.
‘They build better than anyone else I’ve seen, which is just as well. The conditions here, beyond the Pillars of Hercules, are nothing like the Middle Sea.’
Marcellus had been interested in all things nautical since his first trip aboard a trireme, and sailors loved to talk, though some caution had to be exercised to avoid falling for their endemic exaggerations. He had heard about the tidal rise and fall from those he had questioned, but the stories about the outer sea could be hair-raising. Some of the trading captains had sailed so far north that ice islands, floating on the surface, had turned them back. These men traded in amber and other precious objects, like tin and silver. Wonderful woollen cloaks came from the Pretanic Islands, easy to reach since they were a mere twenty-five leagues from the shore of northern Gaul. They were hard to believe, these tales he had been told, of storms where the waves had risen above the height of the masts, of whales ten times the size of the ship who sang to each other, yet swam alongside and never harmed men; and he had disbelieved more than he should.
Now, at sea, he would readily admit to being wrong. Nothing had quite prepared him for the sheer volume of water and the way it behaved, once you got out beyond the narrow entrance to the Middle Sea, and that alone took some doing due to the current, a boat being forced to hug the northern shore, and that only possible with a good following wind. The waves could indeed be huge! White-capped, whipped onwards by a screaming wind, curling over themselves to form dark cavities, rushing at phenomenal speed, then crashing onto rocks that had been worn down over time into fantastic shapes. Other days would see the same water a huge and gentle swell with troughs deep enough to hide you from land. And the smell was different, with air that had travelled over an ocean that seemed to have no end, all the way from the very rim of the world, carrying with it magical elements that could make you dizzy.
‘It’s not magic, Marcellus. You’ll get used to it,’ said Regimus as he staggered out of the steady wind, and the old seafarer was right; he had.
Marcellus was amidships, one hand holding on to the mast, his hair whipping about in the breeze, nose up and his eyes gleaming with pleasure, while beneath his feet the oars dipped evenly into the water, carrying the first of his ships forward at a steady pace. He turned to shout to Regimus, who stood with his arms around the great sweep.
‘Used to it, man? I love it! I think Neptune must be somewhere in my bloodline. Standing here, I feel at one with the gods.’
They had sacrificed a bull before sailing, as well as listening carefully to the augurs, but the gods were fickle, inclined to smite foolish mortals. The augurs and their corn-fed chickens guaranteed nothing; it was a reading of the sky, the shape and direction of the clouds, the state of the sea, a careful watch on the behaviour of the seabirds, the smell of the spume by those who had sailed these waters before, that provided some feeling of security.
‘Put her before the wind, Regimus. Let’s get that sail up and see how she handles.’
The old man called the orders and most of the oars were lifted and shipped, only those needed to steady the ship and hold her head true remaining in the water. He leant on the heavy sweep bringing the quinquereme round so that the wind was dead astern. They rose on the swell and the coast lay clear ahead: rocky, with narrow sandy bays and the mountains rising into a blue haze behind. Men hauled on ropes and the boom holding the huge square sail rose up the mast, then they lashed it taut and it took the wind, bowing out as though it would tear. Water started to run white along the ship’s side and Marcellus ran forward, dodging round the corvus, to observe the sea cream under the bows.
He moved back to the stern, took the sweep from Regimus, edging it this way and that, trying to find out how far he could steer off true before the sail flapped uselessly and the ship lost speed. Finally satisfied, he took in the sail, ordered the men back to their oars and sent the head oarsman to beat his tattoo on the great block of wood that stood just before the well of the ship. It was nothing like a trireme, built to ram the enemy; the heavy quinquereme was built to carry soldiers into battle, but speed could still be a prerequisite of a successful manoeuvre, placing the Roman ship in an advantageous position when faced with the much lighter ships Marcellus would need to engage.
They raced through the water as the drumbeat increased. The land, so recently a strip on the horizon, was now close enough for each feature to be clear to the naked eye. The rowers bent and strained, bent and strained, the sweat running freely from their bodies. Marcellus could not see their faces, but he knew, from his own experience, that they would be screwed up in pain, fighting to fill their lungs with air. Mentally he willed them to greater efforts, watching carefully for the first sign of collapse. One oar, wrongly handled, could throw out the whole rhythm of a galley. The heaving noise of snatched breath was clear above the sound of wind and sea, so the legate gave the order and the oars were shipped again, this time with exhausted rowers collapsing over them, as if suddenly dead.
‘Excellent,’ said Marcellus. ‘Back to Portus Albus, Regimus, let us see how our other ships and crews are doing.’
Brennos knew they were coming long before the first legionary put a boot outside the camp gate. He felt it in his bones as he awoke from his dream; not pain, for it was like an ache lifted. He looked at Galina, asleep by his side, the one person who had kept faith with him out of love rather than fear, never doubting that his prediction would come true. Not that anyone had dared to say anything to his face, but Brennos could see into men’s minds, so he knew they thought him mad, obsessed with the defeat of Rome. He never tried to explain, since that first battle against Aulus Cornelius, that it was the triumph of the Celts he sought; that he would have fought Carthage, Rome’s predecessors in Iberia, with equal venom. His hand ran softly over Galina’s thigh and she murmured in her sleep, while his other hand took the gold eagle that he always wore round his neck, the personal talisman that he believed would decide his fate.
Gifted to him by his uncle, a senior Druid who had helped him to escape from the hole in the ground in which he had been placed, as well as death at the hands of those who hated and feared him in the Druid community, it had been with him ever since that day, only ever removed when washing. Taken by his namesake, Brennos, from the Temple of Delphi, hundreds of years before he had been told it had magical powers, though it had as yet failed to fulfil the prophesy which went with it; that one day he who wore it would stand triumphant in the Temple of Jupiter Maximus high on the Capitoline Hill in Rome, a man who had conquered the legions and the city.
