Ben Kane - Clouds of War

Quintus had thought about this countless times, yet he still wouldn’t have changed the way he’d done things. Humble citizens they might be, but Urceus and his comrades were as dear to him — dearer — than anyone but his family. ‘If I wasn’t here, you wouldn’t have anyone to keep you out of trouble,’ he shot back.

Urceus chuckled. ‘Listen to you! It’s the other way round, you know that! If not for me, you’d be dead a dozen times over.’

The truth of it was that they had both saved each other’s lives more than once, but the banter was part of their routine. ‘Enlisting in the velites was the only way that I could continue to fight Hannibal. My father, gods rest his soul, was so angry with me that he’d ordered me back to Capua.’

‘I remember. But the lowliest class of infantry?’ Urceus tapped his head with a finger. ‘Choosing that, when you could have been sunning yourself on the family farm?’

‘You know as well as I do that I wasn’t going to sit at home, not with Hannibal roaming the land. Becoming a veles was the best choice I had.’

‘Bloody fool,’ said Urceus, but the affection in his voice took all the sting from the insult.

‘Besides, I’ve risen in the world since.’

‘A fine hastatus you may be, but I’d wager your mother still doesn’t approve.’

‘She will have come to accept it by now,’ Quintus said. Once she had recovered from the shock and relief of seeing him alive after Cannae, Atia had been quick to express her displeasure that he was a foot soldier. Until that point in his life, Quintus had always obeyed his mother. Not that day. He’d listened to her outburst and then told her that he would be remaining in the infantry. To his surprise, she had backed down. ‘Just stay alive,’ she had whispered.

‘Mothers are good at accepting what their sons do. It’s part of their job. Least that’s what mine used to say.’ Urceus jabbed a thumb at the trees. ‘I’m going for a piss.’

Quintus grunted. He was thinking about his former friend Hanno. Was he dead? Four and a half years had passed since their last meeting. In that time, there had been scores of battles between the legions and Hannibal’s army. Hanno could easily have been slain. If he had survived, he would be on the mainland, for none of Hannibal’s troop had yet landed on Sicily. That knowledge made Quintus grateful. Hanno was one of the enemy, and it would be preferable if they never met again. He couldn’t prevent a sneaky thought that wished Hanno still alive. There were worse men in the Roman ranks than he. Quintus couldn’t quite bring himself to pray for Hanno, but he did not wish him dead. Enough good men had lost their lives, including his father, at Cannae.

‘Gods, but I needed that,’ said Urceus, returning. ‘There was enough in my bladder to put out a burning house.’

‘It’s the wine you drank last night. If Corax caught you tipsy on sentry duty, he’d fucking kill you.’

‘But he won’t, because we’re two of his best men, so he leaves us be,’ Urceus said, grinning. ‘Besides, I wasn’t tipsy. Just happy.’

Quintus snorted, but Urceus was probably right. He could hold wine the way a barrel of sawdust soaked up water. Quintus’ tolerance was far lower, which annoyed and pleased him in equal measure. He could do without the ribbing he got from his comrades for holding back, but it was good to feel normal the morning after a piss-up when the rest of them were grey-faced, sweating and vomiting. His eyes roved the landscape again. Far off to the south, a flash of light on the road drew his attention like a vulture to a corpse. ‘Look!’

Urceus shot to his side, the banter forgotten. ‘What?’

Quintus pointed. ‘I saw sun glinting off metal. There it is again. And again. That’s more than a couple of travellers.’

‘It isn’t going to be a merchant caravan. They’re rare nowadays.’

‘A Syracusan patrol then.’ They watched as the group drew nearer. Corax would want details, and the newcomers were far enough away to risk waiting. That didn’t stop them both gripping the hilts of their swords. Eventually, they could see the force was made up of horsemen and foot soldiers.

‘How many?’ asked Urceus.

‘I’d say upwards of fifty riders, and four or five times that number of infantry. You?’

‘About that. What in Hades’ name are they up to?’

‘Scouting around Leontini, perhaps? They won’t be happy that we took it a while back.’

‘You could be right. Maybe Hippocrates and Epicydes want to prove that they’ve got balls. This lot could be scouts for a larger force that will attack Leontini.’ Urceus gave him a huge nudge. ‘Either way, Corax will want to know. You keep an eye on them. I’ll go.’

‘Fine.’ Quintus was already preparing himself for the fight. Since Hippocrates and Epicydes had taken control of the city, all Syracusans had become enemies. Corax wouldn’t let this force by. His duty was to defend the road that led north. It wouldn’t matter that the Syracusans outnumbered his men. He would want to give the enemy troops a bloody nose at the very least.

It was a pity that the approaching soldiers weren’t Carthaginians. They were the ones who had started this damn war, who had killed his father. The Syracusans had reneged on a time-honoured treaty with Rome, though. They were the foe here. If we kill enough of the whoresons, Quintus decided, if we slay so many of them that we can build a bridge to the mainland with their skulls, the Senate will have to reinstate us. Frustration stung him, because even if they displayed such extreme savagery there was no certainty that it would convince the Senate of their loyalty. It seemed more likely that he would end his days on Sicily. That he would never see his mother or Aurelia again.

‘What have we got to look forward to?’

The familiar voice dragged Quintus back to reality. He spun, saluted. ‘A strong enemy patrol, sir.’

Corax, a middle-aged man with a narrow face and deep-set eyes, returned his salute casually. His eyes scanned the road to the south. ‘I see the miserable dogs — moving along as bold as brass, eh? Like they own the damn place.’

‘They must think we have no forces in the area, sir,’ said Quintus.

‘A stupid mistake to make,’ replied Corax with a nasty leer. ‘We’ll have to teach them the error of their ways, eh?’

Quintus and Urceus exchanged a look. Corax had always been a tough taskmaster, but since he’d saved all of their lives at Cannae, his status had risen close to that of a god. Despite the familiar nervous feeling that presaged combat, they both grinned. ‘Yes, sir,’ they said in unison.

‘Best get a move on. We want to be in position long before they reach us.’

Corax had picked a spot for their camp close to a massive old holm oak that had been torn down in a winter storm some months prior; its fall had entirely blocked the road. In peacetime, local landowners would have removed the obstruction. These days, travellers had simply hacked away enough of the smaller branches to be able to pass single file along one side of the carriageway.

‘Marcellus will want the trunk shifted when he leads the legions to Syracuse,’ Corax had declared when they’d arrived, ‘but until then we’ll leave it be.’

‘Good idea not to move the tree, wasn’t it?’ Quintus whispered now. ‘It’s a perfect place for an ambush.’

‘Damn right,’ Urceus replied, chuckling.

Quintus didn’t voice the concern that kept twisting in his guts. What if the Syracusans saw them?

Corax, who was pacing up and down behind them, whacked Urceus across the calves with his vine cane, and they fell silent.

Quintus, Urceus and the rest of the eighty men in Corax’s century were hidden in the thick scrub nearest the ‘passage’ through the branches of the fallen tree. Sections of juniper bushes had been cut and laid in great heaps to conceal them. Every fifteen paces or so, there was a ‘gateway’ in the roughly made ‘wall’, covered over by a wedge of branches; a hastatus had been assigned to each, his job to pull the vegetation out of the way when Corax gave the word. Half of Corax’s hastati had been placed some way beyond the blockage, and half before it. Quintus and Urceus were with Corax in the latter group; Ammianus, the century’s second-in-command, led the former. Vitruvius, the maniple’s junior centurion, lay on the other side of the road with his eighty soldiers, his force similarly divided.