Simon Scarrow - Britannia

‘This is bloody absurd!’ Macro thundered. ‘When I’m done speaking with the legate, I’m going to have your balls for breakfast.’

‘That’s enough of this nonsense!’ Glaber intervened sharply. ‘Optio, send one of your men for the camp prefect at once. Tell him, in my name, that we demand to see the legate. I want permission to pass, or Silanus himself down here at once. Move!’

The optio stepped back a pace, flustered, then turned and shouted an order to one of his men. The legionary left his shield and javelin in the charge of one of his mates and ran off towards the group of horsemen a hundred yards away on a rise that overlooked the battlefield. Macro turned to the tribune and nodded his thanks.

Out on the causeway, the leading century had stalled. Covered in clinging mud and still being battered by missiles, the testudo was starting to fall apart. A long string of casualties was struggling back to the mainland, nursing their injuries as they backed away behind their shields. Some helped their less able comrades, while a handful just lay in the mud, too weak to move. Another signal sounded and a fresh century started forward as the first began to fall back, losing more casualties on the way. They edged aside into the shallows as the new formation struggled past and moved closer to the obstacles they were tasked with clearing, immediately coming under the same deluge of missiles that their predecessors had endured. They stopped and hurriedly formed a testudo before proceeding.

‘The lads are getting a hammering today,’ Macro said quietly.

Glaber had also been following proceedings and clicked his tongue. ‘It does seem to be a profligate waste of men for such limited results. They can’t have removed more than ten of those stakes. With what’s left, you would need to work through more than a few legions to clear the passage at this rate, I should think.’

They watched a little longer, until the legionary who had gone to find Silanus returned and breathlessly reported to his optio. The latter turned to his squad and barked an order. ‘Let them pass!’

The soldiers stepped aside and Macro and Glaber spurred their mounts on, cantering up to the small cluster of officers and the headquarters staff gathered about Legate Quintatus. At the sound of their approach, Quintatus turned his attention away from the battlefield and glared at Macro and Glaber as they dismounted. He cleared his throat.

‘This had better be important, gentlemen . . .’

‘A trap, you say?’ Quintatus frowned. He had listened to Macro’s report without interruption as they stood a short distance apart from the other officers, at the legate’s insistence. ‘Perhaps you are mistaken.’

‘I don’t think so, sir. We interrogated the prisoner very thoroughly. I would place good money on him telling us the truth. And then there’s the strong force we saw marching north, towards your line of communication with Mediolanum.’

‘You may have overestimated their strength, Centurion.’

‘No, sir. The leader of the patrol who spotted the enemy is a good man. A reliable soldier. I trust his judgement.’

‘Patrol? Then you didn’t see the enemy with your own eyes?’

‘No, sir,’ Macro admitted. ‘The presence of the enemy was reported to me by Optio Pandarus. He had gone forward to observe a village and saw the enemy column. He had estimated their strength when he encountered and captured one of their scouts. He took the man prisoner and returned to the fort to make his report. I grasped the significance of his sighting and had one of my best men interrogate the prisoner for the full story.’

‘Just a moment, Centurion. Your optio was the only witness to the sighting of the column?’

‘Yes, sir. But that’s not the point.’

‘Oh, I think it is. The man was probably tired and may have misjudged the size of the enemy force for any number of reasons.’

‘But what about the prisoner’s story, sir? There were witnesses enough to that.’

‘And how many of you speak the prisoner’s tongue?’

Macro was starting to get a sinking feeling about the legate’s cross-examination of his account and had to compose himself as he continued. ‘I used an auxiliary from the Eighth Illyrian to translate for us, sir. He has some mastery over the local dialects.’

‘An auxiliary. I see . . .’

‘I saw no reason to doubt that he was doing his job as accurately as possible, sir.’

Quintatus sniffed. ‘I’m sure. That’s just one reason why you are a centurion and not a legate. Has it occurred to you that your prisoner might well have been spinning you a story? I can think of nothing the enemy would like better than for you to believe a pack of lies and come racing up here to warn me that the natives are setting a trap for me, and then for me to retreat out of these accursed mountains just as I am on the point of achieving a final victory over the Druid scum and their followers.’ He paused briefly. ‘Can you not see that, Centurion?’

Macro clamped his lips together and seethed in silence as he reflected that one of the main reasons why he was a centurion and Quintatus was a legate was because the latter had been born with a fucking silver spoon in his mouth. He wished that the infant Quintatus had bloody well choked on it and saved them all a lot of trouble. All the same, he went over the details of what he had reported, step by step, and concluded that if the legate was right in his suspicions, then the enemy had to be very devious indeed. Not only that, but they would have been depending on a chain of coincidences to bring their plan to fruition. It was hard to believe that he had been gulled by them, but equally his story seemed to cut little ice with Quintatus.

‘I do not doubt that your interrogator was thorough,’ the legate continued, ‘but add it all up, Macro. One man, your optio, sees some enemy soldiers, and one of them just happens to fall into his lap. When he gets the prisoner back to the fort so that he can be questioned, there is only one man who is able to translate both the questions and the answers the prisoner gives. It hardly sounds very reliable. And then your prisoner could simply have been lying to mislead us. Isn’t that possible?’

‘It’s possible, sir.’

‘Then isn’t it also possible that the very last thing the enemy would want is for me to continue the campaign while we are on the very cusp of a great victory?’

‘I suppose so.’ Macro glanced towards the crossing point, which was fast disappearing as the tide began to come in. Already the second century had abandoned their work of removing the obstacles and were backing away from the enemy-held shore. They picked up their wounded as they clambered through the mud, and left their dead to the rising sea as the last of the enemy’s missiles began to fall short. The crossing point was still thick with obstacles and the enemy would almost certainly do their best to set up more stakes under cover of darkness. To Macro’s experienced eye it looked as if the legate was very far from being on the cusp of a great victory. It was much more likely that he was on the cusp of a great defeat, unless he took the warning seriously and acted to remove the army from the enemy’s trap.

‘Then why, in the name of Jupiter, best and greatest, didn’t you make the connection between the information that was fed to you and the wider strategic situation? You have been played by the Druids, and played handsomely, I might add.’ Quintatus softened his tone. ‘There’s no shame in admitting it, Macro. The Druids are devious fellows and you have to pay them due credit for orchestrating the whole thing in order to force me to break off and retreat. They knew they would never be able to stop us fighting our way to the shores of their sacred island. They knew that they would never be able to hold the island against us. So they confected this plan to try and divert us from our goal. Surely you can see that?’