The Helvetian Affair Read online

  Strabo was walking across our front, slightly down the incline. Without taking his eyes off the enemy, he called us to attention, “Centurio . . . State!”

  The enemy remained well out of pilum range. There was now a mass of a couple of hundred of them, standing just outside the tree line. They made no attempt to advance on us. Then, a few dozen of them ran forward, twirling something over their heads.

  Strabo screamed, “Scuta . . . Erigit’!”

  No sooner did we raise our shields to cover our heads and bodies, than slingbullets rained down on us. We had taken two or three volleys to no effect when one of the legionaries on the left shouted a warning, “Centurio! Flank! Left!”

  I stole a peek around my shield and saw the enemy working their way through the trees on our left flank. Then, from our right, I heard, “Centurio! Hostes a’ dex’!”

  The slingers were trying to hold us in place while their mates got around our flanks. If they got some slingers on our right, our open side, they could do some damage.

  Strabo had to pull the centuria back. If he pulled back quickly, he would expose us to the slingers to our front. If he withdrew slowly, the enemy might get around on our exposed flank.

  “Centurio! Ad testudinem! Form the turtle!” Strabo commanded.

  The extended ranks withdrew backward, shields up, and fell in at the rear of their contubernia. The contubernia side-stepped to a close interval. Front and flank shields came up and interlocked, forming a wall around three sides of the century. The legionaries in the interior of the formation lifted their shields over their heads and locked them to form a roof.

  We waited. The command to withdraw didn’t come.

  Where was Strabo?

  I peeked around my shield. He was down! He was on his hands and knees in the grass. His helmet was off. He was bleeding from his nose and from his head.

  “Centurion down!” I shouted.

  I heard Bantus’ voice from the rear, “Centuria . . . take my command! Ad tergum . . . It’! Backstep . . . MARCH!”

  As we began to backstep out of the trap, I again looked and saw about six of the enemy running across the field toward Strabo.

  Without thinking, I broke the formation and ran down into the bowl toward my centurion. When I reached him, the first of the barbarians was well within pilum range. I let loose! The weighted spear hurtled forward, taking the man full in the face. I drew my sword. I sensed another pilum fly from behind me and saw it bury itself in a barbarian’s chest. I glanced back quickly to see that my geminus, Minutus, had followed me.

  The four remaining enemy were almost on top of us. The closest raised a knife. Without thinking, I stepped forward and delivered a percussus with the boss of my shield. My umbo made contact. I heard the man’s neck break. I stepped forward with a sword thrust, and the next man impaled himself on my gladius. His momentum pushed me back. I couldn’t withdraw my sword from his abdomen. Minutus moved around my right side. He took the next barbarian with his shield. The man literally flew backward as the umbo of Minutus’ shield smashed into his head.

  Then, it was over.

  The sixth man, seeing his five mates killed so quickly, was having none of it. He fled back to the mass of barbarians at the edge of the forest. They seemed to hover there for a few heartbeats. Then, they began to melt back into the trees.

  For a few heartbeats, all I could hear was the sound of my own breathing. I looked around me. Two barbarians lay dead, pinned to the grass with our pila. Another man lay in front of me, his head at an impossible angle. Another had a face that was a mass of blood and shattered bone. A fifth man was on the ground, screaming and trying to keep his guts from pouring out of his belly. Minutus relieved him of his agony with a quick thrust into his throat.

  I could still hear moaning. Then, I remembered. Strabo! The centurion was sitting upright on the ground, holding his head. Blood was pouring down his head over his right ear. I spotted his helmet on the ground next to him. There was a dimple, the size of a baby’s fist, above the right cheek guard.

  Our centuria had halted about a fifty paces away. They were out of the turtle and standing in the standard formation.

  “Capsarius!” I shouted. “I need a medic! Man down!”

  Minutus walked up and dropped our two pila on the ground. “Not even bent,” he observed.

  I looked up toward our centuria. They were still stationary, but Bantus was striding toward us. I imagined for a moment that he was going to congratulate me, maybe I’d get a decoration—at least a silver torc.

  When he got to where I was standing, he said, “Miles! Remove your helmet!”

  I didn’t know what he meant.

  Again, he ordered, “I told you to take off your shaggin’ helmet, Podex!”

  Quickly, I fumbled with the bindings under my chin. I removed my galea.

  No sooner did I have it off than Bantus slugged me on the jaw. I fell on my ass next to Strabo.

  “Sta, miles!” Bantus shouted at me. “Get back up on your feet, soldier! Get your helmet back on!”

  While I was sitting on the ground, searching for my helmet, the capsarius arrived. He looked at the two legionaries sitting on the ground and asked, “We got two casualties?”

  “Just the centurion!” Bantus snapped. “Get on your feet, Insubrecus!”

  I got up and put my helmet back on and laced it up. Bantus wasn’t done with me.

  “You stupid son of a whore! You never break formation!!” He continued to shout in my face, “Never! For no reason! You break formation, you endanger your mates . . . the entire centuria . . . I don’t care if your mother’s being raped by a cohort of hairy Krauts right in front of you! You do not break formation! Do you understand me, you shit?”

  “Compre’endo, Optio!” I snapped.

  While Bantus was ripping me to shreds, Spina, the medicus, arrived on the scene. He bent down over Strabo and ran his fingers over the centurion’s skull. “Bene,” he muttered to himself. “Skull’s in one piece.”

  “Centurion! What day is it?” Spina asked Strabo.

  Strabo just stared up at Spina.

  Meanwhile, Bantus was “fixing” me: “Breaking formation in contact with the enemy . . . You could suffer fustuarium for that . . . Do you want to be beaten to death? Did you know that, stulte? What you got going for you is only that you ran toward the enemy and gutted three of the bastards! And, you may have saved your officer’s life . . . but that’s no excuse for what you did . . . Compre’endis me, miles?”

  “Excuse me, Optio,” Spina interrupted.

  “Qui’ vis tu, Medice?” Bantus turned.

  “I need tah move dah centurion hee’ah back to my wagon, so’s I can treat’im,” Spina explained. “Could I borrow a couple a ya guys hee’ah to help?”

  “Of course, Medice,” Bantus responded. “Brevis! Detail a couple of the boys to help the doctor here!”

  “A’mperi’tu’, Optio!” I heard Brevis respond.

  Suddenly, Gelasius, our cohort commander, arrived on the scene. He saw Strabo on the ground and the capsarius bandaging his head. Then, he looked at the dead barbarians lying in the grass.

  Ignoring Spina and me, he asked, “What’s going on, Bantus?”

  “Centurio!” Bantus reported. “This bunch of mentulae tried to rush the wagons . . . We stopped them . . . Strabo was hit by a sling-bullet.”

  “Tota?” Gelasius asked examining the reddening welt on my jaw. “That it?”

  Bantus hesitated for a few heartbeats, then said, “Tota, Centurio!”

  Gelasius gave him a long look. Then he turned to ask Spina, “How’s Strabo, Medice?”

  “Don’ know, Centurion,” Spina answered. “May just be a concussus, but head injuries aw tricky. I wanna get ’im back to my wagon.”

  Gelasius grunted and said, “Carry on, Medice!”

  He took one last look at the dead raiders and turned to Bantus, “Bene gesta, Optio! I’ll need your after-action report when we get into camp tonight. You
have the centuria until Strabo gets back on his feet!”

  “A’mperi’tu’, Centurio,” Bantus responded.

  As soon as Gelasius was out of hearing range, Bantus hissed at me, “I just saved you, Pagane! Don’t forget it! You saved Strabo’s bacon . . . a life for a life, eh . . . And don’t forget what I told you about breaking formation . . . You try that shit again, and I’ll beat you to death myself . . . Now get your sorry ass out of my sight!”

  I double-timed back to the centuria with Minutus in my wake.

  The column started moving again at the sixth hour. Soon, we turned southwest down a wide, fertile valley. Here, there was no sign of war. There was a town at the head of the valley, rather large and prosperous for the region, totally unfortified. In the fields there were cattle, who watched us pass with total indifference. We saw some people, too. None of them seemed the least concerned by the presence of a Roman legion in their valley.

  We moved into camp at the eleventh hour. The legion had hot rations waiting for us: a hot stew of pork and vegetables with fresh bread and plenty of posca. Before the first watch of the night, Bantus briefed us that this was the valley of a Gallic tribe called the Vocontii, a people at least nominally under the Roman imperium. Since they grow fat on money extorted from Roman merchants in tolls, protection, and “hospitality,” they were quite content with Roman rule. The general had passed down the word that the natives were not to be harassed in any way: no stealing crops, livestock, or anything else not nailed down, and leave the women alone!

  We were going to consolidate with the rest of the army the following day. The other legions were camped near a Gallic town called Leminco, about fifteen thousand passus down the valley.

  As Bantus left us, he announced, “A’ Galliam comatam beneventi, infantes! Welcome to long-haired Gaul, guys!”

  V.

  Sub Patrocinio Caesaris

  UNDER CAESAR’S PATRONAGE

  He pulled into Leminco by the sixth hour on the next day. It was an easy march down the valley of the Vocontii, more of a parade than a march. In fact, as we marched, children and civilians looked up from their work in the fields and waved as we went by. About two thousand passus out, Malleus, our primus pilus, pulled us off baggage train duty and lined us up with the rest of the legion. We marched into the valley where the rest of the army was camped as if it were a military parade and not the end of a trek over the Alps. Caesar Imperator, along with his entire staff, met us as we marched down into the encampment. Mounted on a white stallion, Caesar was bareheaded and draped in a sagum rubrum, a bright red general’s cloak. We passed in review before him.

  We were guided to a section of the valley where we were to camp, and there we began to dig in. By the ninth hour, we had the fossum dug and the vallum erected for our marching camp. Although we were surrounded by the other legions of the army, we still had our sudes lashed and positioned in our section of the ditch.

  As usual, our centuria was billeted near the rear gate, just to the left of the Via Praetoria, Headquarters Street. When we arrived, Moelwyn had our contubernium tent set up. When we arrived, he wasn’t about, so we assumed that he was off tending to our mule. Tulli went to find Bantus to learn where the bath point was, when it would be our turn to wash up, and what the arrangements were for chow. The rest of us decided to take advantage of the lull and crap out for a while.

  Anyway, that was the plan.

  I was about halfway down a deep, dark hole, on my journey to the realm of Morpheus, when a caliga nudged my shoulder. I opened my eyes expecting to see Tulli, but then I realized I was looking up at a soldier wearing the purple waist-ribbon of a praetorian.

  “Gaius Marius Insubrecus, miles, es tu?” he demanded. “Are you Trooper Gaius Marius Insubrecus?”

  “Sum!” I answered getting to my feet. “I am!”

  “You are to accompany me to the praetorium,” he stated. “Stat’!”

  “Uniform?” I asked.

  “Full kit! Sword, no scutum, no pilum!” he again stated flatly. “I will wait for you outside the tent.”

  What was this about? I wondered. Did Bantus rat me out in his report and say that I broke formation? I was carrying my own sword, and the praetorian was waiting outside for me. At least I wasn’t under arrest.

  I had to wake Rufus up to get back into my lorica. He wasn’t too pleased about having his siesta disturbed, but was glad it was me being dragged over to headquarters and not him. As I left the tent, I told him to let Tulli know where I was. I doubt he heard me over his own snoring.

  As soon as I emerged from the tent, without a word to me, my escort turned and began marching toward the Via Praetoria. As expected, he turned right on the main street of the camp toward the praetorium. Then, surprisingly, he walked right by our legionary headquarters and continued toward the main gate of the camp. He passed through with barely a nod to the sentry on duty.

  We marched west across a field to another of the legionary castra in the valley. When he approached the gate, the sentry challenged him with the sign, malus, apple. He responded immediately with the countersign, quercus, oak, and without stopping, he stated, “He’s with me.”

  When we turned through the portal and entered the camp, I realized that we were on the Via Principalis, the main street of the camp. The praetorium of that camp was straight ahead, but I had no idea why I was being summoned to the headquarters of another legion.

  When we arrived at the headquarters tent, my escort pointed to a spot on the ground and said, “Wait here until you’re summoned.” Then, he entered the tent.

  I didn’t know how literal the praetorian was being, but I didn’t wander far from the spot on the ground he had indicated.

  It was a good thing I was away from the entrance. Soldiers with the thin, red sashes of the general’s staff bustled in and out. Runners, I assumed. Periodically, senior officers, tribuni angusticlavi; junior, “narrow-band” tribunes; and even a legatus legionis, a legionary commander passed me by. But, to these men, I was invisible, just another mulus among thousands. That was fine with me. I had nothing to gain from being noticed by senior officers—and much to lose.

  Finally, a clerk on the general’s staff stuck his head out. “You Insubrecus?” he asked.

  “Sum!” I answered.

  “Bene! Get in here!” he demanded.

  I entered the headquarters tent, still with no idea what was going on. I was hoping it was all just some mix-up, but they seemed to have my name. And, if this had anything to do with my breaking ranks to save Strabo’s bacon, this seemed to be the place where death sentences were passed.

  When my eyes adjusted to the gloom inside the tent, the scriba who had summoned me pointed to a cubicle on the right and said, “Report to the legate, Insubrecus!”

  The legate, my mind screamed! This was worse than I had imagined. A shaggin’ legate?

  I entered the cubiculum and reported to a man seated behind a field desk, “Legatus, Gaius Marius Insubrecus, miles, reports as ordered.”

  The man looked up from some tabulae he was scanning and gave me a long look. He didn’t look like a legate to me. He looked more like a guy you didn’t want to mess with in a cheap caupona in a bad neighborhood after drinking half the night. He had short, curly black hair, which matched his bushy eyebrows. His eyes were deeply brown, but alive, the kind of eyes that see everything, assess it, and find it amusingly lacking. He had a couple of days’ worth of dark stubble on his chin and jowls. He had discarded his officer’s lorica, which was lying against the side of the tent. His sword and his helmet were deposited on top of it. He wore the faded, red tunic of an infantry mulus.

  When he stood up, I was again surprised. He was half a head shorter than I was.

  “I’m Labienus,” he told me, “the old man’s legatus ad manum, his chief of staff. Let me take a look at you.”

  He inspected my uniform and equipment, adjusting invisible defects and centering my belt.

  “Let me see your gladius!” he d
emanded.

  I unsheathed my sword and handed it to him. He inspected the blade, grunted, and handed it back to me.

  “Bene,” he continued. “When you report to the imperator, don’t mumble . . . Speak up like a man . . . The old man hates it when people mumble . . . And look the old man right in the eye when he talks to you . . . Don’t look down . . . Roman soldiers never look down . . . Speak when spoken to . . . Be short and to the point: ‘Yes, sir,’ ‘No, sir.’ No explanations unless the old man asks you . . . Got it?”

  “Yes, sir!” I answered.

  “And, this is very important,” Labienus continued. “Don’t stare at the old man’s hairline . . . He’s very sensitive about that . . . Compre’endis tu?”

  “Compre’endo, Legate!” I replied.

  “Bene . . . Let’s get this over with . . . Any questions?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  Labienus waited a few heartbeats and said, “Are you going to ask it or just leave me here guessing?”

  “Sir! To whom am I reporting?” I asked.

  Labienus gave me a long, quizzical look, then snorted. “Son, you are about to meet the proconsul of all the Gauls, the commander of this army, and the great-great grandbaby of the goddess Venus herself. You are about to meet Gaius Iulius Caesar.”

  Labienus made an overly dramatic gesture toward a doorway in the rear of his cubicle. I marched through.

  I entered a larger area of the tent. Most of the tent walls were covered by maps with various military symbols etched in chalk over the representations of the terrain. There were soldiers dressed only in their red tunics fussing over them. A tall, thin man in a white tunic with the thin, purple stripes of an Equestrian seemed to be supervising them. I began to walk toward him when Labienus put his hand on my shoulder and guided me toward the back of the tent.