“Legate Fronto?”
“Yes.”
“Centurion Hosidius of the Eighth. What can we do to help?”
“Anyone back there brought a shield?”
Hosidius paused for a moment and then relayed the question back through his men. There was a murmur of argument back a way and then a voice piped up.
“Got a signifer’s shield, sir. Quite small and round, though.”
Fronto shook his head irritably.
“It’ll have to do. Pass it forward.”
There was a moment of grumbling and muttered complaints as the bulky shield was passed with difficulty along the passage. Eventually an unseen hand passed it to Fronto and he took the item and looked down at it. A circle of red wood and leather perhaps two and a half feet across, emblazoned with the golden bull. Hardly what he really wanted, but apparently the best thing on offer. Fronto turned to Capito.
“As soon as I start to run, get along behind me. Stay close. If I fall, take the shield and keep running. We need to get to that gate and secure it, so that we can get to their ships.”
Capito nodded nervously and Fronto grinned.
“Don’t worry. Fortuna’s a personal friend.”
Without waiting further, the legate took a deep breath, raised the shield, and turned the corner, breaking immediately into a run. He felt the bronze strip at the edge of the shield grating along the rock sides of the tunnel as he ran, but was more concerned about the possibility that, though much of his bulk hunched over behind the shield, a well placed shot could still put an arrow through his thigh.
And yet there was no stretch and no twang. He ran on, but began to falter. Something was wrong. Why were they not at least
Smoke.
His nostril hair curled and he came to a halt, Capito bumping into him again, and risked lowering the shield for a moment.
It had struck him as odd when he first looked down here that there should be undergrowth by the gate in a sea cave. Undergrowth, no…but carefully prepared and dried faggots and bundles of perfectly combustible foliage stacked against the gate? Now
“Shit!”
Turning, he pushed Capito and yelled up the passageway.
“Retreat! They’re smoking us out!”
The silence from further up the tunnel erupted into panicked movement as half a century of men turned as fast as they could and began to scramble back up the passageway toward the stronghold above.
The tunnel acted, just as the Veneti had obviously planned, just like the draw hole in the roof of a hut, funnelling the smoke into the passageway and drawing it up toward the boulder entrance on the cliff top.
Fronto coughed as the first cloud of grey, roiling smoke wafted past him.
As fast as they could, they ran back to the corner with its lamp. Already Hosidius had moved his men up to the next bend.
Ignoring the jagged rock walls tearing at their arms as they ran, Fronto and Capito charged up the slope, the passageway thickening every second with heavy black fumes.
Another corner; and another. And suddenly they were at the back of a column of legionaries desperately clambering through the opening and out into the air.
Fronto coughed raspingly and next to him Capito burst into a fit of choking. Around them the drawn fumes filled the passage, blackening everything and blocking out the light. Everything went dark as men coughed and struggled.
And suddenly an arm grasped his wrist. Fronto squinted into the smoke to see a centurion’s chest harness, adorned with phalera and other decorations. The back of the hand around his arm was criss-crossed with scars.
“Come on, sir. Out of there.”
Fronto sighed with relief as Balventius hauled him out of the entrance and all but threw him back on to the grass before reaching in to retrieve Capito.
Fronto fell back with immeasurable relief, relishing for a moment the heavy rain battering his skin and washing the black dust from his face. He wiped his forehead and eyes and sat up. A huge column of smoke issued from the tunnel entrance, pushing up into the sky like a signal. His euphoria at the sudden breathable air and dull light waned once more as he descended into a racking cough that was matched by a crack of thunder from above.
As the fit subsided, he became aware than another figure had crouched next to him. He squinted up into the rain to see the shiny face of Carbo, his primus pilus, frowning down at him.
“Dangerous, sir. Moments like that are why you have underlings.”
Fronto sighed.
“There wasn’t time. What’s happening?”
Carbo shrugged unhappily.
“They’re leaving, sir. They’re just flitting across the rock shelf as though they’re on wheels. Our fleet can’t pursue them, ‘cause they just can’t get close enough. We can watch where they go, but we can’t follow.”
Fronto growled.
“These people are
Chapter 8
(Iunius: temporary camp on the Armorican coast)
Fronto pushed the tent flap open and made his way out into the dusk, shivering against the cold. Grumbling to himself, he traipsed through the wet grass and across the hilltop to the thicker undergrowth near the cliff’s edge. The interim camp prefect, whose name Fronto had now learned was Draco, had planned their camp so well that the nearest latrines for the officers of the Tenth was more than halfway across the length of the fortress. Consequently, those officers had taken to going near the cliff edge for their business, at least when there were no high winds.
Fronto found the spot nice and easily. A helpful centurion had spelled out ‘Draco’ with small stones for the officers to piss on; a nice touch in Fronto’s opinion. Hoisting the front of his breeches down, he began to relieve himself with a sigh, grateful for a rare dry evening, even if everything underfoot was still wet through.
His eyes strayed from the rocky name near his feet, across the thick grass and to the bay below, passing across the white-flecked waves and to the next headland, which had, until this afternoon, been one of the most powerful of the Veneti strongholds. He sighed again.
For a month now the legions had been marching up and down the coast, even inland a way to chase yet more shadows that dissipated as soon as the Roman army got close. A whole month of besieging fortresses and chasing elusive bands of warriors and what did the army have to show for their efforts? Nothing. Not a single captive.
Every time the army came close to trapping the Veneti, the Gauls found new and ever more inventive ways to slip out from under their enemy and make it to safety once again. Five more fortresses had fallen in the few weeks after that smoky tunnel had demonstrated to him just how prepared the enemy were. Five more fortresses, and still not a single solid victory.
The moment that had brought him close to breaking point had been when they realised that the Veneti that had fled from the latest conquest had doubled back on them and made their way down to one of the strongholds the legions had already taken once. It was like… it was like trying to nail the sea to a tree; like trying to catch fog in a net. One thing Fronto knew for certain was that Caesar was close to the end of his tether and, when they finally caught the Veneti, Fronto wouldn’t have been among their number for all the gold and wine in the world.
