Nobody Loves a Centurion(5)
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.