Chapter Four

 

TITUS Mittius rubbed his hands together and blew into them to warm them. Irritatingly, he’d thrown dice with a fellow prefect over duty assignments two months ago and the other officer – the lucky bastard – had secured the supply depot at Arausio in the Rhodanus valley. Apart from the occasional strong wind, that area was a good Roman one, and close enough to the southern coast that the temperature was noticeably warmer. Here at Brivas, in the lands of the Arverni, the great Cevenna mountains kept any warmth at bay and locked the land in cold winter. Frost had formed on his saddle.

‘How many more do we have unhomed?’

‘Unhomed, sir? None. But many of the houses are near-ruinous. A winter of neglect, you see, sir.’

A winter of neglect.

Because a large portion of the former inhabitants of this Arverni town were now either in the burial pits at Alesia or the slave markets of Massilia and Rome. His job as ‘resettlement officer’ for the Arverni sounded extremely grand, and it certainly involved plenty of variety, travelling around the tribe’s lands and allocating property and trade from the dead to the living poor. Trying to build workable communities from the war-ravaged survivors, so that by spring there would be enough inhabitants to allow the town to live on. It sounded like the very best side of Rome. One might be tempted to consider the seedier side of it, of course. Because when the settlement had the best population manageable and everyone had a home, land and whatever else they needed to live, all those goods that went unclaimed were requisitioned by Rome and sent back to the quartermasters to sell or reassign. But on a practical level it worked for everyone. The Arverni benefitted from Roman organisation helping them rebuild, and Rome gleaned a little profit from the endeavour.

‘Very well, Aulus. Once the assignments and musters are complete, send the foraging parties out to the local area and gather stone and timber. Most of these places should be repairable and anywhere you find that isn’t, pull it down and reuse the materials. I want Brivas to be self-supporting by the end of Januarius. Then we move on to Revessio.’

The centurion saluted and marched away to his men.

Mittius sighed and looked about the oppidum of Brivas. It was not a defensive place, particularly. More of a civil settlement by the river. It had potential, mind. Reminded him rather of Falerii Novi, his hometown thirty miles north of Rome. In a time of peace, when the summer sun burned the moisture from the land, Brivas might even be described as pleasant.

He shivered in the icy breeze and led his horse around the shattered, ruinous remnant of a building. Not pleasant at the moment, mind.

Time to write a letter to Marcia. The couriers would be coming through tomorrow on their way east. He would receive any new orders from the proconsul’s staff, and the riders would take any missives on for Cisalpine Gaul and for Rome. He tried to think what he would say. He missed her. He was pleased with what he was doing and proud to be bringing civilisation and the Pax Romana to the world. He hoped the girls were being good and that young Sciavus had stopped sniffing around after them. Gaul was cold, and he was looking forward to…

Titus Mittius gasped as the cord slipped round his neck and tightened. He was no stranger to combat and his fingers immediately reached down to the sword at his side, but were smashed numb with something heavy and his sword was drawn from its sheath and confiscated. He tried to cry out. Aulus could only be on the other side of this damn building! But the cord around his neck was choking him. Powerless, he gave in and stopped struggling as each movement brought a slight tightening of the cord.

His assailants moved into view, and he felt a supernatural shiver run through him. Several of them, wearing voluminous, heavy, black cloaks with deep hoods, and each sporting a mask with a chillingly friendly expression. Identical masks. Somehow the slight smile in the visage made the figures all the more menacing. Two of them took his horse’s reins and moved the beast on. They were being so brazen in full daylight. Most of the populace and the soldiers were across the river, running through allocations and ledgers, of course, but there would still be occasional legionaries, and centurion Aulus Critus, up here in the settlement, while they catalogued and gathered everything for redistribution.

Knowing that he was helpless, Mittius allowed himself to be moved forward towards the house that served as his home and headquarters as long as he was in Brivas. In the most amazingly professional manner, given his predicament, he began to take mental notes. They were wearing trousers and leg wrappings that clearly labelled them Gauls, and probably locals. Either Arverni or other tribes nearby. They included women among their number, for one of the two leading the horse moved with the sway of hips that made her gender obvious. Their masks looked like the cult masks the Gauls used at some of their religious ceremonies. That last thought panicked him, for like every Roman in the army he had heard the horror stories of what druids did to Roman prisoners in their crazed, dangerous cults.

No one came to his aid, despite his hopes, and a few moments later he was being shoved roughly through the door to his house. In the rear, a spring that rose from the ground in the back garden flowed through the house along a wide stone trough and then out to the settlement again. He’d wondered about this curious little piece of hydro-engineering when he arrived, and one of the locals had explained that this house had belonged to a butcher, who used the water in his work. Indeed, many hooks hung from the rafters and he tried not to think too much about them right now.

His hands were jerked round behind his back and tied tightly together, and the pressure of the cord on his throat loosened slightly, allowing him to heave in a deep breath of life-giving air.

‘I don’t know who you are, but we are here for the good of the people of Brivas,’ he hazarded, hoping to shatter their prejudices with a little well-placed explanation.

‘Quiet!’ snapped the woman in horribly-accented Latin, and a big man who had been just out of sight behind him stepped forward.

‘Hardly quiet, Belisama. I want him talking. I want him talking a lot.’ This voice was like clotted blood in a wound, like pitch bubbling from a swamp. It made the Roman shudder.

The big figure turned to Mittius.

‘I am going to ask you three questions, Prefect. Be aware from the start that you are already a dead man. But how that happens is up to you. You will either die of drowning, or a cut throat, or strangulation, or simple beating. If you are truly unhelpful, it may be more than one. Are you prepared?’

Mittius straightened. He was terrified. The warm, wet feeling down his leg made that absolutely clear. But he was also a soldier of Rome and whatever it was these people wanted, they were clearly enemies of the republic.

‘You’ll learn nothing from me, when you burst into a peaceful settlement and interrupt the process of trying to restore the land after the war, you animals!’

The big man shook off his hood and reached up, peeling the mask away from his features. The raw, torn, ravaged thing that sat behind the mask sent a shockwave of dread and revulsion through Mittius.

‘The next half hour is, for you, going to be a time of woe, I think,’ the monster said, smiling through a torn face.

 

* * * * *

 

Molacos of the Cadurci washed his hands in the spring water until the last of the pink tinge ran off out through the hole in the wall and off through the garden. Rising from a crouch, he dried them on his trousers and looked down at the remains of the Roman, whose throat had suffered periodic, agonising restriction so many times that the red rings around his neck formed a striped collar. The top of his head was matted with blood where the skull had cracked and all four limbs were at unpleasant angles from the body slumped over the trough. Despite the beatings and the strangulations the man had been surprisingly strong-willed, and in the end he had been allowed to drown only until his lungs were full and burning and then, while still conscious and panicked, he’d been pulled back from the stream and his throat hacked from side to side with a serrated knife.

Oh, the prefect of the Arverni resettlement had died badly.

Molacos hated Romans more than any living thing in the world, and he would tear the heart from a Roman girl-child without flinching. But he respected strength. And even while he had hated this prefect as much as any other man of the legions, he had to acknowledge grudgingly that the soldier had remained a man to the end, despite everything.

He turned. Ten other figures stood in the shadowy interior, only a couple of them still disguised.

‘Still nothing, then,’ old Cernunnos rasped, one of the few still donning the mask.

‘No. But someone will answer me in time. And while they resist, we get to kill Roman officers. There can be no goal more true than ours and no path more just. Every one of these vermin that graces his afterlife alleviates the Roman blight on the world of men.’

‘Where next?’ asked Rudianos, his flame red hair framing a pale, serious face.

‘There is a supply depot at Segeta. That is on a major Roman route, and officers there will be well-informed.’ Molacos frowned. ‘Where is Catubodua?’

‘Out stalking some legionary she saw from the window.’

The nightmare-faced warrior snarled. ‘Idiot woman. Go bring her back. We must move on before our actions are noted and we bring two centuries down upon us. She knows better than that.’

‘You know the widow. If she has two heartbeats to put together she will use them to kill a Roman.’

Molacos grinned, the effect something demonic and horrible. ‘Give me an army of Catuboduas and I would eradicate Rome altogether. Still, her vengeance must wait, or our task will fail. Go fetch her while we ready the horses. Segeta awaits us.’