LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

IV of the Ninth was no longer a frontline maniple, not on paper at least. The last nine days had cost Marcus fifteen dead and twenty-six wounded, fifteen of whom were walking and in the ranks. The other eleven were buried somewhere in the supply train on a wagon. Marcus had personally checked on the wounded men himself that very morning and he had come away bitter and angry, knowing he was going to lose at least four more before the day was out, their wounds mortal. The maniple would be stood down until replacements could be found, replacements that Marcus knew would never come, not from Rome at least. Now one of two scenarios would unfold: either another maniple would fold before his and he would be given the remnants, or his maniple would be broken up to feed others. For a proud fighting man it was a bitter coin toss.

      From his tent in the centre of the encampment, Lucius Postumius Megellus, commander of the Second and Ninth, heard the shouted order for the gate to be closed. The sound gave him a profound sense of relief and he immediately chastised himself for the feeling, cursing the Carthaginians who had hounded his column for the past nine days and chased them like wolves until, now, Megellus only felt safe within the confines of a perimeter wall.

      The camp was temporary only, built with the six-foot-long pointed oak sudis stakes that travelled with the column. The lead maniples had begun the camp three hours before dusk, laying out the boundaries of the rectangular encampment before beginning the digging of a trench, ten foot wide by five deep, the earth thrown inwards to form a rampart, on top of which the sudes were implanted and intertwined with lighter oak branches. The camp had been built each night on the march and dismantled each morning with an efficiency born out of repetition and training, the hard labour of construction forgotten each new day as the column marched onwards.

      Megellus would now change the nature of the camp. He would order it transformed into a castra stativa, a standing camp. The walls would be made more solid. Stone would be gathered from the nearby river and added to the vulnerable points of the wall around the gates. Towers would be built on the four corners of the castrum to warn of any approach by the enemy.

      The legate bit back the bile of disappointment that had emerged so soon in the campaign. Scouts had returned from the city with reports that the enemy had fled at the sight of the advancing column, although Megellus suspected they had simply withdrawn rather than offer combat to an enemy that would be defeated in time anyway, and with a lot less Carthaginian blood spilt.

      The legate would confirm the reports in the morning by sending ten maniples to the city gates. The show of force would impress the Council of Makella and imbue in them a sense of victory, justifying their decision to support Rome and not Carthage. Megellus would then split his command and send the Second forward to cover the three days’ march to the city of Segeste, again to lift the siege that the legate was sure would be already lifted when they arrived. The enemy would attack their supplies on the march and again there would be losses, the quartermaster estimating that already nearly half of their original equipment was gone.

      The Second would take Segeste but would go no further. They would build a second standing camp, a second island in a sea of hostility. The campaign would grind to a halt, the army forced onto the defensive in an effort to protect and hoard its valuable, now irreplaceable supplies. This was no way to fight a war, Megellus thought bitterly, a man used to fighting aggressively and offensively.

      The legate walked out of his tent and observed the hurried activity around him as the army prepared to bed down for the night. It was becoming dark and Megellus watched the vigilae, the night guard, take their posts on the walls, their eyes searching the darkened surrounding countryside for the unseen enemy. There will be no attacks this night, Megellus thought sarcastically, for why would the Carthaginians attack the now inert Roman army. Only two weeks before Megellus had informed his men that the campaign would continue as before, as if the blockade did not exist, but the Carthaginians’ tactic of specifically targeting the supplies had thwarted the legate’s intentions. The Punici had drawn their blades and used them to deadly effect. The legions were now hamstrung, crippled and cut off from home.

      At the forefront of Megellus’s thoughts were the vital questions of how long the legions could now hold out in hostile territory, for without resupply they would eventually have to turn back – and how far they would need to withdraw. On the first question, only time would tell. The second? If the legions did finally withdraw, the Carthaginians would pursue them, of that there was no doubt, the enemy gaining strength and confidence as the legions bled those same resources into the sand. With a dread feeling Megellus answered this second question in his mind. If the tables were turned he knew what he would do. He would pursue the enemy to the bitter end. The Punici would employ the same determination they had shown over the previous nine days. The legions would be pursued past the territorial dividing line of the last campaign. They would be pursued past their winter camp and, finally, if the Carthaginians were not checked, the Second and Ninth would be pushed into the sea itself.

      Atticus crouched down and scooped a handful of seawater from the shallow surf, splashing the water onto his face in an effort to clear the exhaustion from his mind. One hundred yards away the Aquila rested gently against her anchor line, the setting sun reflected in the wave tops thrown up as the shifting current broke against her hull. Atticus stood up and turned his back on the shoreline, walking slowly up the gentle slope of the beach at Fiumicino, arching his back as he went to stretch his tired muscles. He glanced over his shoulder one last time to see the two crewmen who had rowed him ashore already asleep in the bottom of the small skiff. After another sixteen-hour day training raw recruits, Atticus couldn’t begrudge them the rest, and he silently cursed the late hour of the summons from the camp prefect which kept him from his own cabin.

      Atticus had asked to see Tuditanus five days before, the same day the training schedules had been issued to the galleys, the Aquila amongst them, tasked with training the new sailing crews arriving daily at Fiumicino. Atticus had instantly come ashore to see the camp prefect but his request for a meeting had been denied, as had every repeated request since. Until now.

      Walking up the beach, Atticus was once more struck with awe by the activity surrounding him. For the past week he had watched as barge after barge, marching column after marching column arrived at the coastal village, to fill the beach with raw materials and the tented city with sailors and soldiers. Fiumicino was now home to some ten thousand people, half of them craftsmen, who laboured every daylight hour to turn rough raw timber into graceful spars and frames for the developing fleet, and so now, as Atticus crested the dunes at the head of the beach, the skeletal frames of twenty triremes stood tall on the sand above the high-water mark.

      The camp prefect’s tented quarters stood apart from the main camp, enclosed within a palisade on a patch of raised ground overlooking the village of Fiumicino. Atticus identified himself at the gate before being ushered in, his arrival expected by the guards. He ducked under the awning of the tent and stood to attention, his eyes rapidly adjusting to the gloom of the interior. Tuditanus sat silently behind his desk poring over a series of scrolls, murmuring quietly to himself before he raised his head to acknowledge Atticus. A former manipular centurion and veteran of the Pyrrhic War, Tuditanus now held the highest rank an equestrian could achieve in the legions, and his attitude was one of a man completely at ease with his station in life.

      He held Atticus’s gaze for a full minute before standing up and circling around to the front of his desk.

      ‘You asked to see me, Captain Perennis?’ Tuditanus said impatiently.

      Atticus instantly bit back the words that rushed to his lips. ‘Yes, Camp Prefect,’ he answered evenly. ‘It’s about the training schedule issued to the galleys.’

      ‘Go on …’ Tuditanus said slowly, irritation in his voice.

      ‘I believe the approach ordered is wrong,’ Atticus said in a rush, his course set. ‘The new crews can’t be trained to ram in the time we have. We need to teach the crews how to steer a galley for boarding and make that our priority.’

      ‘You believe a Roman sailor cannot be taught how to ram?’

      ‘No, Camp Prefect, not in the time we have.’

      ‘The

Скачать книгу