SPQR VI: Nobody Loves a Centurion Read online

  “Too late,” Carbo said. “There’s commander’s call. You’ll have to report immediately. Prepare for a little ribbing.”

  We set out on foot for the camp, Hermes behind us leading the animals.

  “How long is this rampart you’re building?” I asked Carbo.

  “It stretches from the lake to the mountains to contain the Helvetii, about nineteen miles.”

  “Nineteen miles?” I said, aghast. “Is this Caius Julius Caesar we’re talking about here? The same Caesar I knew in Rome, who never walked where he could be carried and who never lifted a weapon heavier than his voice?”

  “You’re going to meet a different Caesar,” he promised me. And so I did.

  We entered the camp by the southern gate and walked up the Via Praetoria, which led straight as an arrow’s path through the center of the camp to the praetorium, the inner compound containing the commander’s staff tent, surrounded by its own low earthen rampart. The Via Principalis intersected the Via Praetoria at right angles; beyond it lay the quarter occupied by the higher officers and whatever troops they cared to keep separate from the regular legionaries, decurions, and centurions. Usually, these were extraordinarii, men with more than twenty years in the ranks who had no duties except for combat. I noticed an unusual number of tents ranked beyond the praetorium and asked Carbo about them.

  “A special praetorian guard Caesar has organized. They’re mostly auxilia, both foot and cavalry.” Other generals used praetorian guards, usually as bodyguards on campaign, but often as a special reserve to employ at crucial moments in battle. From the size of Caesar’s guard, I assumed that their purpose was the latter.

  Before the praetorium, along the length of the Via Principalis were ranked the individual tents of the prefects and tribunes. At the juncture of the two streets stood the legion’s shrine: a tent containing the standards. Before it stood an honor guard, and since the weather was good the standards were uncovered on their wooden pedestal. The guards stood motionless with drawn swords, and from their short mail shirts and small, circular shields you might have taken them for auxiliary skirmishers; but their position and the lion skins covering their helmets and hanging down their backs proclaimed that these were signifers and the aquilifer, among the most important officers of the legion, raised from the ranks because they were the bravest of the brave.

  We saluted the eagle as we passed, and I noted that the rectangular plaque below the eagle, with its dangling horsetail terminals, read: LEGIO X. That was comforting. The Tenth was rated by everyone as the best. By everyone except the other legions, that is. I knew a number of men who served with the Tenth, both officers and rankers. If I had to be out here with only a single legion around me, I couldn’t have asked for better.

  Two of the praetorian guards stood before the gap in the waist-high rampart that surrounded the praetorium; men armed with thrusting spears, bearing light armor and shields. The rampart was more a symbolic partition than a real defense. In the middle of its eastern wall was the high platform from which the general could address the forum, an open space where the legion could assemble, and where the traders did business with the legion and the local farmers could hold markets on specified days.

  Naturally, we were the last to arrive. A large table had been set up before the big general’s tent and all the senior officers were grouped around it. These were the tribunes and prefects, the officers of auxilia, and a single centurion. This last, I knew, would be the centurion of the First Century of the First Cohort, known in every legion as the primus pilus: First Spear. Alone among the officers he wore bronze greaves strapped to his shins, archaic armor abandoned centuries before by other foot soldiers but retained as a sign of rank for centurions. At the moment we entered, he was gesturing toward something on the table with his vinestaff, a three-foot stick the thickness of a man’s thumb and another badge of the centurionate. As we walked in, he looked up, and his face froze.

  Caesar was leaning on the table, looking at what I now saw was a map. Behind him stood his twelve proconsular lictors, leaning on their fasces. In Rome, the lictors wore togas, but here they were in field dress: red tunics with wide leather belts dyed black and studded with bronze nails, a custom dating to the time of the Etruscan kings. As the staff fell silent, Caesar looked up and straightened, then he took on his familiar, hieratic pontifex maximus demeanor. Slowly, solemnly, he drew a fold of his military cloak over his head.

  “Gentlemen,” he pronounced, “cover your heads. It is a visitation from Olympus. Victory must be ours, for the god Mars has descended to be among us.”

  The assembly broke up into raucous laughter so loud it probably alarmed the sentries. Even Carbo laughed so hard he got hiccups. I hoped my helmet hid the worst of my flaming face as I stood like an idiot with my arm still fully extended in salute.

  “I don’t suppose you brought any reinforcements, Decius?” Caesar said, mopping the tears from his face with his cloak.

  “I am afraid not, Proconsul.”

  “I suppose it was too much to hope. Well, we were all in need of a good laugh, anyway. Join us, Decius. Titus Vinius was about to give us a report on the state of the fortifications and enemy action against it. Continue, First Spear.”

  Enemy action? I thought. There was no host massed out there in the usual Gallic prebattle fashion. A line crawled across the map from the mountains to the lake and it was toward the lake that the centurion pointed with his vinestaff.

  “Weakest spot’s here where we run into the lake. The ground is swampy there and they come around the end of the wall through the shallows, do what damage they can, and run back the same way. They can flank it just as easily from the mountain end, but they’re too lazy to go that far. Plus, in the swamps we can’t chase ’em with our cavalry.”

  Caesar looked up at Carbo. “Gnaeus, I want you to put together a small force of picked auxilia; good swimmers who aren’t afraid of water. No armor, not even helmets. Just hand weapons and light shields. I want an end to these attacks by web-footed Gauls.”

  “They’ll be on duty tonight, Commander,” Carbo said. I cleared my throat.

  “Mars wishes to speak,” said Lucius Caecilius Metellus, a distant relative of mine, nicknamed “Lumpy” for a couple of prominent facial wens. He wore a tribune’s sash over his plain armor.

  “Good to see you here, Lumpy,” I said, giving him a big smile. “Where are the hundred sesterces you owe me from the Cerealis races two years ago?” That shut him up.

  “You have a question, Decius?” Caesar said.

  “Please bear with me, Commander, since I have just arrived. There is no barbarian army outside the walls, so I presume the Helvetii are still treating with us. How can they do that while sending raiders to harass us?”

  “These aren’t coastal Gauls who know how to conduct themselves like civilized people,” Caesar said. “Their envoys speak for the people as a whole, but they think it is to be understood that some of the young warriors will come out at night to send arrows and javelins into the camp. To them it’s no more serious than a spirited horse vaulting a fence into another man’s field.”

  “They like to catch sentries and roving patrols,” said Titus Vinius, the First Spear. “They’re head-hunters, you know. You’ll find big heaps of skulls in the deep woods where their holy groves are.”

  He was a typical old soldier trying to scare the new recruit, but he was wasting his time. I had seen far worse than that in Spain.

  “Decimus Varro,” Caesar said, “the state of provisions, if you please.” I noted that Caesar spoke in a brisk, clipped fashion, quite different from the languid style he affected in Rome.

  “Stores of grain, preserved fruit, fish, and meat are sufficient for ten more days, twenty at half-ration. The supply train from Massilia is due at any time.”

  “Decius, did you pass a supply train on your way here?”

  “No, Proconsul.”

  “Quaestor, increase purchases from the local farmers. I don’
t want to be caught short of provision when the Helvetii make up their mind to attack.”

  “They will demand exorbitant prices for inferior produce, sir.” The quaestor was a serious-looking young man who was vaguely familiar to me.

  “Pay them with a minimum of haggling,” Caesar said. “The state of the treasury means nothing to fighting men. The state of their bellies means everything.”

  “Yes, Caesar.” The name of the quaestor came back to me: Sextus Didius Ahala. He had held the same office in Rome a year or two before and I did not envy him the position. Proconsul’s quaestor is a responsible position, but it is the dullest work imaginable, managing the accounts and contracts of a province and its military establishment.

  After about an hour of hearing reports, issuing commands, passing the watchword, and so forth, the meeting broke up. Caesar indicated that I should remain behind, along with Vinius.

  “First Spear, we need a place to put Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger. Where do you suggest?”

  The man looked me over with the casual indifference professional soldiers usually show for amateur junior officers. Only proficiency in battle ever won any respect from the likes of this one.

  “We already have more officers than we need, Proconsul. What we do need is more legionaries.”

  “We shall lose a few of both before much longer,” Caesar remarked. “In the meantime, Decius needs a battle station.”

  Vinius stooped and picked up his helmet from where it lay beneath the table. “The cavalry,” he said. He wanted me out of his way, for which I could hardly blame him. Inexperienced officers, especially green tribunes, are the bane of a centurion’s existence. I might have told him that I was not unacquainted with military life and campaigning, but he would not have been impressed.

  “Excellent. Decius, you may report to the praetorian ala. Their present commander is a Gaul named Lovernius, but he needs a Roman superior. As a praetorian you are attached to my personal staff, so you will probably spend a good deal more time with me than with your ala.”

  “I don’t suppose they are Spanish cavalry?” I had a good deal of experience riding with Spaniards.

  “Gauls,” Caesar said. “But deadly enemies of the Helvetii.” Which didn’t mean much since all the Gauls feuded with each other constantly. Well, any cavalry had to be better than Roman cavalry, which historically had been as pitiful as our infantry had been formidable. Like seafaring, mounted warfare is just one of those things for which we have no aptitude.

  “Proconsul, with your leave, I’ll go and inspect the watch.” Vinius tied the laces of his cheekplates beneath his blue-shaven chin. His helmet was as plain as the others I had seen in this legion, except for its horsehair crest, which ran from side to side instead of front to back, another distinguishing insigne of the centurionate.

  “Do so,” said Caesar, returning his salute. When the man was gone, he turned to me again.

  “You allow him much latitude, Caius Julius,” I said, able to be less formal now that we were alone.

  “I allow all of my centurions more latitude than I allow most of my officers. Centurions are the backbone of the legions, Decius, not the political time-servers in the sashes. Oh, a few like Carbo and Labienus are excellent soldiers, but my centurions, I know I can depend upon.”

  “Can you depend upon anyone else?”

  He understood my meaning exactly. “What was the word in Rome when you left?”

  “Well, I wasn’t exactly in Rome. The City is unhealthy for me just now, so I was on my father’s Tuscian estate just before . . .”

  Caesar waved this aside impatiently. “I don’t care if you were in Athens. You are a Caecilius Metellus and you know what’s being said in the Forum. What is it?”

  “That your enemies in Rome gave you this extraordinary command in full confidence that you would fail. That Crassus and Pompey rammed this command through the Assemblies and past the Senate for the same reason. That you and your army are going to wither and die up here in the wilderness like grapes on a vine when moles have gnawed away the roots.”

  He looked at me with deep-sunken eyes. “I am not ready to be a raisin yet. The first part is true enough, but not the rest. I have the full support of Pompey and Crassus, never fear.”

  “But what of that, Caius Julius? You know how Pompey operates. He’ll let you do all the fighting and then take away your army at the last minute.”

  Caesar smiled frostily. “But that is politics, and I am far better at politics than Pompey.”

  “Well—that is true enough,” I allowed.

  “Decius, why do you think I worked so hard to secure this proconsulship?”

  “Because the Gauls have been stirring up trouble for years and are probably allowing Germans to cross the Rhine,” I said. “It’s the only big war in the offing and war is where the glory and loot and triumphs are to be found.”

  He now smiled a bit more warmly. “That is blunt enough. You don’t think patriotism is my motive?”

  “I wouldn’t insult your intelligence by saying so.”

  “Good. Most of my tribunes are lickspittles.” He stepped close and took my arm. “Decius, there is far more to this command than just dealing with the Helvetii. There are tremendous opportunities here in Gaul! Back in Rome, people think it means nothing except whipping some brutish, half-naked savages, but they are wrong. Crassus wants a war with Parthia because he thinks only conquering wealthy, civilized enemies will enrich him and Rome. He is wrong too.”

  “I fully intend to avoid Crassus’s war, when he gets it.”

  “Good. Stay with me here in Gaul. I am telling you, Decius: the men who support me here these next five years will dominate Rome for the next thirty years, as those who supported Sulla have dominated her for the last thirty!” These were vaunting words, delivered with intensity.

  Of course, he was not speaking to me. He was speaking to gens Caecilia, whose support he desperately wanted. His appeal was none too subtle, either. My family had been among Sulla’s supporters, with consequent beneficial effects upon our political prominence.

  “You know I am not much of a soldier, Caius.”

  “What of that? Rome produces plenty of soldiers. You are a man of uncommon quality and unique talents, as I have frequently remarked in company of all qualities.” This last was true. Caesar had been known to speak highly of me to people who denounced me as a mere eccentric if not an utter fool.

  This was not the Caesar I had known in Rome. He sounded like a man possessed by the urge to conquer. He certainly didn’t look like a conqueror. Tall, thin, and rapidly balding, he looked far too frail to take the weight of an army upon his narrow shoulders. He wore a plain white tunic, with only his legionary boots and sagum to proclaim his status. Between tunic and boots his legs stretched as skinny as a stork’s. “I shall consider what you say,” I told him, inwardly vowing to get out of Gaul as rapidly as I could.

  “Excellent. Now go and join your ala. They are quartered in the northeast corner of the camp. Draw whatever equipment you require from the supply tents. Then come back here for dinner. All my officers who are not on watch or other duties dine in my tent.”

  I saluted. “I take my leave, then, Proconsul.”

  He returned the salute and I walked away.

  “And, Decius?”

  I about-faced. “Sir?”

  “Do get out of that ridiculous rig. You look like a statue set up in the Forum.”

  Abruptly, I realized how absurd Caesar would look in a dress uniform, like a mockery of a general in one of Plautus’s comedies. That was why he insisted on soldierly plainness. Caesar’s vanity was as famous as his debts and his ambition. He was having nobody near him who looked better than he.

  2

  MORNING IN A LEGION BEGINS FAR too early. Somewhere a tuba bellowed like an ox in mortal pain. I awoke on my folding camp bed and tried to remember where I was. The smell of the leather tent told me. I reached down and shook Hermes, who was sleeping on a
pallet next to me.

  “Hermes,” I said groggily, “go kill that fool blowing the horn. You can borrow my sword.” He just grumbled and rolled over. Someone threw open the door flap. It was still dark outside, but I could vaguely make out a man-shape against the glow of a distant watchfire.

  “Time for morning patrol, Captain dear.” It was one of my Gallic troopers.

  “Are you serious? The horses will be as blind as the rest of us in this murk.” I sat up and kicked Hermes. He mumbled something incomprehensible.

  “It shall grow lighter anon, and soon the little birds will be singing. You may trust my word in this matter, beloved.” He ducked back out and let the flap fall. There is really no way to describe how a backcountry Gaul talks, but this is a sample. I grabbed Hermes with both hands, raised him, and shook him as hard as I could.

  “Wake up, you little swine! I need water.” My head throbbed. Caesar’s field table had been austere, but he was liberal with the wine. Hermes had managed to sneak himself some of it.

  “But it’s still dark!” Hermes complained.

  “Get used to it,” I advised. “Your days of lazing around until sunup are over. From now on, you get up before me and you have hot water and breakfast ready.” Eating breakfast was one of those exotic, degenerate habits for which I had been condemned in Rome. Hermes stumbled outside. Immediately there came a thud and a curse as he tripped over a tent rope.

  I laced on my boots, stood, and lurched outside. The camp was coming to life all around me. The altitude and the earliness of the year put a bite in the air and I wrapped my sagum, which was also my blanket, closer around me. Soon Hermes returned with a bucket of icy water and I splashed my gummy eyes, rinsed my foul-tasting mouth, and began to feel marginally better.