Paetus frowned and rubbed his chin. Once, as a young officer out in Spain during the revolt of Sertorius, he’d grown a beard. It was just easier on campaign, and the Spanish all seemed to be bearded anyway. But since he’d achieved higher position and returned from that campaign, he’d never considered it again, until now. He’d made the decision to leave very suddenly in the middle of the night-long session with Fronto.
He felt bad about that. Fronto was one of the few truly decent men in Caesar’s army. He found himself thinking on that traitor Salonius from last year and wondering whether perhaps it was Salonius who had been the decent one, and not Caesar. Clearly not Caesar, in fact. But anyway, he’d decided he had to leave so suddenly and so urgently, fuelled by grief and drink, that he’d pommel-bashed poor Fronto, dropped the sword and ran. Unfortunately, that had left him in just his tunic, breeches and boots with no weapons or armour.
Getting out of the camp had been ridiculously easy. He’d fallen in at the back of a group of off-duty legionaries who were leaving the fortification with a pass to go visit the oppidum, where the locals had thrown their taverns open to their new Roman allies, and had peeled off from the group once beyond and in the dark.
Of course, that idiotic decision made under the influence of Fronto’s wine had resulted in him standing in a clearing in some woodland perhaps three miles from the camp, rapidly sobering and wondering where the hell he was and where he was planning to go. He didn’t even know which direction he’d been heading, until a short stroll through the woods had left him on the south bank of the river.
He’d sat there, his mind gradually clearing, watching the dark waters rush by like his life seemed to be doing, and tried to think; tried to reason and decide what to do. Unlike many men of noble families in Rome, Paetus had actually fallen truly in love with his wife. Oh, he knew that her family were a liability; especially her idiot father, but she was truly a beautiful rose that had grown from that bed of dung. And while he couldn’t care less what had happened to the old soak, Calida cared; he was her father after all, and for Calida’s sake, he’d looked after the fool. And now all of this had spun around and turned on him. He had lost his beloved Calida and the children, the future of the line. And three men were to blame.
Calidus, the old arse, with his drinking, debauchery and gambling, that had brought his family to the brink of total poverty and had landed him in debt to one of the most notorious gangsters of Rome. He was the man who had actually started this whole mess. But there was no way for Paetus to take out his frustrations on his father in law, who would now be feeding the crows in Rome.
Then of course, there was Publius Clodius Pulcher, the man who had given the orders to butcher Paetus’ family. Clodius had to be punished, but that was a task for the future. The man was rich and powerful and guarded by many henchmen. Moreover, he was hundreds of miles away in Rome, and currently far out of reach. Not forever though. By the waters of the Aisne, Paetus had vowed that one day he would find and kill the man. Personally. Enough to stare into Clodius’ eyes and tell the vicious shit why it was that he was dying.
But there was a closer, more immediate problem. The third man. A man in whom he’d placed his trust and the lives of his family, and who had turned around and betrayed him, leaving Calida and the children to die at the hands of thugs without lifting a finger when he’d had the opportunity and the resources to save them easily. Yes, Caesar must suffer too. But that, again, was a thorny problem. Seven legions now stood between him and Caesar. Had he been thinking straight that night with Fronto, he would have bashed the legate and then taken the sword to the headquarters and cut the general’s throat there and then.
But then he would be executed and unable to revenge himself on Clodius. A complex problem. He would have to finish Caesar in Gaul first; get him back to Rome so that he could devote all of his time and the remaining funds of the family to bringing the two men down. But first he must stop Caesar, and that meant stopping Rome.
It went against the grain to betray his people but then, as he continually reminded himself, these were no longer his people. These were Caesar’s people.
And so, his decision made, Paetus had crossed the Aisne, dangerously and alone at first light and, cold and wringing wet, had started to traipse north.
For the first few days, he travelled slowly and carefully, moving from copse, to wood, to gulley, to brush, being certain to avoid any signs of life. He knew the geography here as well as any roman. During interminable briefings in Caesar’s tent he had stared again and again at the maps of the Belgae lands. Straight north would take him through the lands of the Suessiones and then along the dangerous edge between the Bellovaci and the Remi. That in itself was perilous, but at least once he was ten miles north he’d be free of Roman scouts, as Caesar travelled west to meet the Aedui.
Paetus’ journey would cross two more rivers and then into the lands of the Nervii and their allies. He would make for Nemetocenna, the only oppidum important enough to be marked on Caesar’s map, though to which tribe it belonged he had no idea.
And gradually, over the days of aching legs and stumbling through scratchy thorns, Paetus’ resolve had hardened like a diamond, more and more; his confidence had grown, and he had begun to travel in open ground. As the sun rose and set time and again on his slow and uncertain journey, Paetus had changed, though he couldn’t see it himself. His ample frame, fattened from years of living well and little or no exercise, had become already visibly leaner and thinner. Days or privation and non-stop movement had his muscles calling out for release, but he didn’t stop; daren’t stop.
So now, the Paetus who stepped in the early evening into the circle of fire light, was bulky, but muscular, his clothes torn, stained and dirty and barely recognisable as Roman, let alone as military garments, his face part-hidden behind a thick beard and his hair tatty and unkempt. Calida would have shrieked had she seen him.
The barbarian warriors, four of them in all, sat around a central camp fire, their weapons driven point-first into the ground by their sides for easy retrieval, spears gathered in bundles and horses tethered to a sapling. The smell of roasting pork was almost tortuous to Paetus in his current condition, having lived for days now on only a few berries and a raw rabbit he’d been lucky enough to take by surprise.
A twig cracked beneath his foot and the Belgae lurched to their feet, twisting, their muscular arms hauling great blades from the dirt as they did so.
Paetus held both his arms wide, the flats of his palms facing the barbarians in a gesture, he hoped, of peace and surrender. By the Gods, they’d been fast. He was sure the one who grasped a spear could have turned, thrown and impaled him before he’d even put his arms out. But not only were these Belgae sober and sombre, they were alert and shrewd. Their first moves had been merely preparation as they apprised themselves of the situation and decided whether the man should die immediately or not.
“I presume it would be a long shot to suggest that any of you speak Latin?”
The men crumpled up their faces in incomprehension.
“You speak Roman?” he translated himself, shrugging.
One of the men, presumably the leader of the scouts, frowned and asked him something in the guttural tongue of the Belgae.
“I don’t understand” he replied, trying to make appropriate motions with his hand and his ear. “I need to speak to a leader? A man who speaks Latin?”
Incomprehension.
“Chief?” he asked desperately. “Druid?”
He sighed at the blank mask that was his companion.
“I was trying to get to the Nervii? To the oppidum of Nemetocenna?”
A spark of understanding glittered for a moment in the man’s eye.
‘Thank Jupiter’ thought Paetus to himself and smiled in relief as the fifth and unseen Nervii scout hit him hard across the back of the head with a branch.